Ageing and fragmentation of marine microplastics

The generation of small fragments from the environmental ageing of microplastics (MPs) is still a poorly known process. This work addresses the fragmentation of MPs obtained from marine debris consisting of polyethylene and polypropylene (PE and PP in environmental mixture) and polystyrene (PS) after exposure to accelerated ageing by irradiation and mechanical stirring. Number particle size distribution in the 1-100 μm range was assessed by combining laser diffractometry with particle counts from flow cytometry. The results showed the generation of a high number of small MP particles, which reached 10⁵-10⁶ items/mg of plastic with most fragments <2 μm. The results showed that environmentally aged MPs give rise to a larger number of small MPs in a pattern consistent with progressive fragmentation in the three spatial dimensions. The proportion of small MPs was much higher than that found in current sampling campaigns, suggesting a severe underestimation of the environmental presence of small MPs. We also demonstrated the generation of nanoplastics (NPs) in the fraction <1 μm from irradiated runs. The results showed that the mechanism that produced nanoplastics (NPs) from MPs was irradiation, which yielded up to 10¹¹-10¹³ NPs/g with particle size in the few hundreds of nm range. Our results are relevant for the assessment of fate and risk of plastic debris in the environment showing that the number of small plastic fragments produced during the ageing of MPs is much larger than expect from the extrapolation of larger size populations.