Freshwater and airborne textile fibre populations are dominated by 'natural', not microplastic, fibres

Thomas Stanton; Matthew Johnson; Paul Nathanail; William MacNaughtan; Rachel L Gomes

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.278

Freshwater and airborne textile fibre populations are dominated by 'natural', not microplastic, fibres

Sci Total Environ. 2019 May 20:666:377-389. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.278. Epub 2019 Feb 18.

Authors

Thomas Stanton¹, Matthew Johnson², Paul Nathanail³, William MacNaughtan⁴, Rachel L Gomes⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Geography, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK. Electronic address: thomas.stanton@nottingham.ac.uk.
² School of Geography, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.
³ Land Quality Management Ltd, University of Nottingham Innovation Park, NG7 2TU, UK.
⁴ Division of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington Campus, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE12 5RD, UK.
⁵ Food, Water, Waste Research Group, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK.

PMID: 30798244
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.278

Abstract

The potential role of natural textile fibres as environmental pollutants has been speculated upon by some environmental scientists, however, there is a general consensus that their biodegradability reduces their environmental threat. Whilst the risks that they pose remain poorly understood, their environmental prevalence has been noted in several recent microplastic pollution manuscripts. Here we highlight the extent to which natural textile fibres dominate fibre populations of upstream reaches of the River Trent, UK, as well as the atmospheric deposition within its catchment, over a twelve month microplastic sampling campaign. Across 223 samples, natural textile fibres represented 93.8% of the textile fibre population quantified. Moreover, though microplastic particles including synthetic fibres are known to be pervasive environmental pollutants, extruded textile fibres were absent from 82.8% of samples. Natural textile fibres were absent from just 9.7% of samples.

Keywords: Atmospheric deposition; Microplastic; Surface water; Temporal variation; Textile fibres; Wastewater.