An integrated pre-treatment and correlative spectroscopic approach for the identification of airborne microplastics.

Airborne microplastics in a bottling plant are mainly composed of PET, cellophane, cotton blends, and PMMA, identified through a novel multi-analytical workflow.

• Why it matters: Understanding indoor airborne microplastics is crucial due to their widespread presence and potential health impacts, yet standardized protocols for their detection are lacking.
• What they did: Researchers collected airborne MPs in a bottling plant, applied an innovative pretreatment including purification, oil-extraction, and filtration, and used a custom 3D-printed holder for correlative micro-FTIR and micro-Raman analyses of individual particles.
• The result: The multi-analytical approach effectively characterized MPs, revealing typical morphologies and surface pigments, and demonstrated a reliable procedure for identifying airborne MPs in particulate matter.