Preliminary examination on isolation of microplastics (MPs) in sewage sludge from the local wastewater treatment plant

Abstract

The outfalls from wastewater treatment plant has become a major receptor for the release of large quantity of microplastics (MPs) in the environment. To investigate such premise, the present work investigates the preliminary study on detecting and isolating the microplastics present in the sewage sludges, which extensively used as a fertilizer. Especially, the sludge-based MPs are greatly found in India and Southeast Asian countries. The average concentration MPs found in the sludge was found to be 31x103 particles per kg of dry sludge. In order to evaluate the performance of the methods used, spike study was tested using Polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate and polyethylene materials. These outcomes confirmed that sewage sludge disposal is one of the main sources of microplastic pollution in the ecosystem.