Membrane and Water Treatment

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Microplastic release from damaged commercial teabags

  • Kim, Sion (Department of Environmental & IT Engineering, Chungnam University) ;
  • Jo, Eun Ha (Department of Environmental & IT Engineering, Chungnam University) ;
  • Choi, Soohoon (Department of Environmental Engineering, Chungnam University)
  • Received : 2021.05.31
  • Accepted : 2021.09.03
  • Published : 2022.01.25
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Abstract

The use of plastics in our everyday lives have been drastically increased during the last few decades. However with the usage of commercial plastic products there is a possibility of microplastic consumption, due to the fragmentation of the products. Additionally, the potential for microplastic ingestion may also be increased by using damaged products. Hence, the current study was conducted to understand the potential release of micro/nano plastics and organic matter from damaged teabags. To check the leakage tendency, the amount of damage to the tea bags from 1-10 cm were tested along with temperatures of 25-70℃, and exposure times from 5 min to 1 hr was tested. Release of fibrous micro/nanoplastics, and organic leachate from the damaged teabags were observed to understand the outflow conditions. Results showed that with the increased degree of damage, temperature, and exposure time increased the release of fiberous matter, where the increase of temperature, and exposure time increased organic leachate. Additional analysis confirmed the leachate of nylon polymers into the heated water.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The current work was supported by K water's Together PRO project (Project No. 2020-0015-01). Additionally we would like to thank the CNU Chemistry Core Facility (Daejeon, South Korea) for its aid in various analyses.

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