Determination of microparticles, in particular microplastics in beverages

• Main Author: Oßmann, Barbara Elisabeth
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: ddc:543; Antarctic; Arctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Human health
• Online Access: https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/frontdoor/index/index/docId/13278; https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:29-opus4-132788; https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fau/files/13278/DissertationOssmannBarbara.pdf

The usage of plastics makes daily life easier. Being lightweight, resistant, non-conductive and inexpensive, they are used in a wide variety of applications. Consequently, plastic production volumes have increased greatly during the last decades. In keeping with this, the amount of plastics waste has increased dramatically as well. Although some of it is recycled, burned or at least collected and dumped, much plastic finds its way into natural environment. First, larger plastic debris received public attention, as it is unattractive and primarily a threat to various animals. Later, after its first detection in the oceans at the beginning of the 1970s, smaller plastic debris, so-called microplastics, attracted increasing attention. Today, microplastics have been shown to be present in a variety of environmental compartments: in seawater from the Arctic to the Antarctic, in freshwater of rivers and lakes, in corresponding sediments till the deep-sea sediments and also in the air. Moreover, many animals, including food-producing aquatic organisms, ingest these small plastic pieces, potentially causing harm to themselves. Therefore, the questions arose as to whether humans ingest microplastics with their food (aquatic and non-aquatic) and whether doing so may pose risks to human health. Up to now, however, only a few studies reporting the microplastic content in food (e.g., bivalves, honey, German beer and tap water) have been published. Some of these results are viewed sceptically since the researchers did not pay much attention to the prevention of sample contamination and did not clearly identify microplastics as such. Thus, the first aim of the present work was to establish analytical methods for the analysis of microplastics, with special attention to potential unintended sample contamination and with clear identification of the material of particles. Since the first risk assessments of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) indicated that the smallest particles (<1.5 µm) in particular may penetrate ...