Identifying Microplastics in Bottled Water

Microplastics are defined as itty bitty pieces of plastic, less than 5mm in diameter, that have made their way into a variety of sources like bottled water, ocean water and industry waste streams.

In this application note we explain how we employed two spectroscopic techniques to identify and analyze microplastics in bottled water. Read the app note to see:

how we used these techniques
why we recommend them
what you'll see with each one
why you need both

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Identifying Microplastics in Bottled Water application note

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Application Note Preview
One of the biggest challenges with the analysis of micro-plastics involves distinguishing micro-plastic particles from other types of materials and making sure that misidentification does not lead to over-estimating the amount of micro-plastics in a sample. While there can be all types of matrixes that contain microplastic particles this report will focus on micro-plastics in a dilute water suspension. The particles are isolated by filtration. After filtration the sample consists of a collection of particles on a filter and at that point the analysis requires a facile way of distinguishing and identifying micro-plastic particles within a field of other particles.

FTIR and Raman spectroscopy (two different forms of vibrational spectroscopy) are widely used for the unambiguous identification of different types of polymeric materials. The molecular information reflected in the vibrational spectra of polymer materials provides a molecular fingerprint that can be used with spectral databases to positively identify different types of polymer materials. The spectral information supplied by infrared and Raman spectroscopy is similar but not exactly the same.

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What’s in Your Water?

Identifying microplastics in bottled water