Related to the increasing use of synthetic materials and plastics, water and ocean pollution with plastics but also micro-plastic (fibres) emerges as an urgent global issue (Jambeck et al, 2015; Avio et al, 2016 (Marine Environmental Research 2016 1-10); Sebille et al, 2016 - Biefing Paper 19, Imperial College, London UK; Ocean Atlas of Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2017, Germany etc). Especially the generation of micro-fibres from deteriorating macro-plastics, from textile fibres (mainly generated in laundromat!), runoff from roads and highways (tire particles from abrasion!) ´may result in unknow health and envrionmental impacts along the various pathways. It would be timely to produce a review paper that identifies and summarizes the various known research findings and impacts.
Dear Anoop Srivasrava,
many Thanks for your quick answer and much appreciated support!
Best wishes, Johannes Paul
At this point there is still quite limited guidance on how to analyze microplastic fibers. In addition to the reports that Anoop Srivasrava mentioned above I would like to stress that It is advisable to use spectroscopy to test the fibers, as tests have shown that fibers are often falsely identified as microplastics.
(See for example Lenz, R., Enders, K., Stedmon, C. A., Mackenzie, D. M., & Nielsen, T. G. (2015). A critical assessment of visual identification of marine microplastic using Raman spectroscopy for analysis improvement. Marine pollution bulletin, 100(1), 82-91. )
If spectroscopy is not available there is some support to be found in litterature from the clothing industry, where there iae often detailed descritptions on different types of fibers.
Another thing that is crucial when doing studies on microplastic fibers is the usage of continuous laboratory blanks as the level of contamination can be high in even the cleanest labs.