Institute of Environmental Research at Greater Bay Area, Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, P. R. China.
Environ Sci Technol. 2021 Mar 2;55(5):3032-3040. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.0c08374. Epub 2021 Feb 18.
Micro- and nanoplastics unavoidably enter into organisms and humans as a result of widespread exposures through drinking waters, foods, and even inhalation. However, owing to the limited availability of quantitative analytical methods, the effect of nanoplastics inside animal bodies is poorly understood. Herein, we report a sensitive and robust method to determine the chemical composition, mass concentration, and size distribution of nanoplastics in biological matrices. This breakthrough is based on a novel procedure including alkaline digestion and protein precipitation to extract nanoplastics from tissues of aquatic animals, followed by quantitative analysis with pyrolysis gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The optimized procedure exhibited good reproducibility and high sensitivity with the respective detection limits of 0.03 μg/g for polystyrene (PS) nanoplastics and 0.09 μg/g poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanoplastics. This method also preserved the original morphology and size of nanoplastics. Furthermore, to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method, 14 species of aquatic animals were collected, and PS nanoplastics in a concentration range of 0.093-0.785 μg/g were detected in three of these animals. Recovery rates of 73.0-89.1% were further obtained for PS and PMMA nanospheres when they were spiked into the tissues of and at levels of 1.84-2.12 μg/g. Consequently, this method provides a powerful tool for tracking nanoplastics in animals.
微塑料和纳米塑料不可避免地会通过饮用水、食物，甚至吸入等途径广泛暴露于生物体和人类中。然而，由于定量分析方法的有限可用性，动物体内纳米塑料的影响还了解甚少。在此，我们报告了一种灵敏而强大的方法，可用于确定生物基质中纳米塑料的化学组成、质量浓度和尺寸分布。这一突破基于一种新颖的程序，包括碱性消化和蛋白质沉淀，从水生动物的组织中提取纳米塑料，然后用热解气相色谱-质谱法进行定量分析。优化后的程序具有良好的重现性和高灵敏度，聚苯乙烯（PS）纳米塑料的检测限分别为 0.03μg/g，聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯（PMMA）纳米塑料的检测限为 0.09μg/g。该方法还保留了纳米塑料的原始形态和尺寸。此外，为了证明所提出方法的可行性，收集了 14 种水生动物，并在其中 3 种动物中检测到浓度范围在 0.093-0.785μg/g 的 PS 纳米塑料。当以 1.84-2.12μg/g 的浓度向 和 组织中添加 PS 和 PMMA 纳米球时，进一步获得了 73.0-89.1%的回收率。因此，该方法为跟踪动物体内的纳米塑料提供了有力的工具。
