Airborne microplastic detection and quantification - developing, evaluating, and applying novel laboratory and field-based approaches

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The accumulation of persistent, polymeric wear particles in the atmosphere is an emerging public health issue. Commonly termed 'microplastic', this particle domain includes synthetic fibres from textiles, fragments from plastic articles and tyre wear emissions from road traffic. Inhalation exposure to elevated levels of inhalable and respirable microplastics has been linked to occupational lung disease1 and, recently, to upper airway irritation due to the shedding of polypropylene fibres from mask-wearing during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic2. No legislation is in place to limit or reduce microplastic emissions and the proportion of polymeric wear particles in ambient particulate matter, e.g. from road traffic, has increased.This project aims to characterise the presence and quantity of microplastic aerosols in indoor and outdoor environments. It will do this by advancing measurement, using cutting-edge laboratory instrumentation to identify unique chemical tracers for microplastics from diverse urban sources and explore novel technologies for their measurement in the field. Light induced fluorescence (UVLIF) has previously been used to identify the presence of microplastics in tissue, by adapting algorithms used to classify bioaerosols it is hypothesised that the strong plastic fluorescent signature from microplastics will be detectable in ambient samples. This project brings together a team of supervisors with expertise in microplastics, atmospheric science and advanced data analytical tools. EPSRC areas: particle technology and biophysics