Mass Spectrometry Insight for Assessing the Destiny of Plastics in Seawater.

ABSTRACT: Plastic pollution has become an increasingly serious environmental issue that requires using reliable analytical tools to unravel the transformations of primary plastics exposed to the marine environment. Here, we evaluated the performance of the isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) technique for identifying the origin of polymer material contaminating seawater and monitoring the compositional alterations due to its chemical degradation. Of twenty-six plastic specimens available as consumer products or collected from the Mediterranean Sea, five plastics were shown to originate from biobased polymeric materials. Natural abundance carbon and hydrogen isotope measurements revealed that biopolymers incline to substantial chemical transformation upon a prolonged exposure to seawater and sunli

SUBMITTER: Kuznetsova OV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10052999 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature