Towards Comparable Microplastic Data: Challenges and Priorities for Environmental Monitoring

Microplastics (MPs) represent one of the main threats that ecosystems currently have to face. The effects of MPs on ecosystems are not fully understood also because the lack of standardized and harmonized procedures and protocols that allow us to accurately detect and quantify levels of contamination and exposure. Inconsistencies in MP amounts occur because procedural, analytical, and reporting discrepancies notably undermine the comparability of results. This paper summarizes the sources of variability in MP data, appealing to the necessity of standardization and/or harmonization of procedural and analytical methods to avoid misleading comparisons and interpretations.