engleski

Investigation of pesticides interaction with UV- aged polypropylene microplastics: Mechanism and toxicity studies

Microplastics (MPs) are polymer particles smaller than 5 mm, and due to their potentially harmful effects on the environment are considered a global threat. MPs have a large specific surface area, and the most common sorption mechanism of organic pollutants is hydrophobic. The aim of this work was to establish the correlation between the properties of MPs and the adsorption capacity for the investigated pollutants as well as toxicity effects on tested organisms. For that purpose, we investigated the interactions of pristine and UV- aged polypropylene (PP) MPs with pesticide simazine (SMZ). The concentration of the pesticides was monitored by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled with Photodiode Array Detector. Density functional theory (DFT) was applied for the investigation of the interaction energies in order to clarify the nature of the adsorption and the bonding types. Aquatic toxicity was assessed by exposing the MPs samples to crustacean Daphnia magna according to the standard procedure ISO 6341:2012. The adsorption isotherms of SMZ on PP showed the best fit for the Langmuir model which implies a monolayered adsorption process. Aquatic toxicity effects were enhanced in the case of UV-aged MPs, which is noticed as an increase in the dilution factor of such samples.

Microplastics ; Pesticides ; DFT ; Adsorption ; Toxicity

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