Highlights from a review of microplastics in marine sediments

The ubiquity of microplastics (MPs) has now been demonstrated throughout Earth's geographic areas in both terrestrial and marine environments. Marine ecosystems are the end point plastic waste cycle, sediments increasingly considered to be a sink for debris, with possible deleterious effects on seafloor ecosystems. However, low concentration MPs complex matrix such as sediment makes their reliable analysis difficult. MP is usually determined by various extraction procedures followed optical, spectroscopy or mass spectrometry techniques, therefore hard compare. Therefore, determination challenging task. Here we present short review studies dealing analytical protocols detection discuss advantages different techniques used. This literature reveals that most 70 were carried out European Asian coastal use NaCl saturated solution, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) far most-used steps separation, digestion identification, respectively. Based this body literature, recommendations suggestions future research order increase reliability results facilitate inter-comparison. H2O2 solution strongly recommended separation steps, respectively, whereas during filtration step it necessary choose filter type based identification technique. More thorough investigation needed establish systematic protocol identification. A combination would permit identify all items, personal bias could avoided if automatic was implemented. Nanoplastics (NP) occurrence also discussed, although no data available date.