Occurrence and size distribution study of microplastics in household water from different cities in continental Spain and the Canary Islands

The purpose of this study was to investigate the occurrence of microplastics (MPs) in drinking water in Spain by comparing tap water from different locations using common sampling and identification procedures. We sampled tap water from 24 points in 8 different locations from continental Spain and the Canary Islands by means of 25 mu m opening size steel filters coupled to household connections. All particles were measured and spectroscopically characterized including not only MPs but also particles consisting of natural materials with evidence of industrial processing, such as dyed natural fibres, referred insofar as artificial particles (APs). The average concentration of MPs was 12.5 +/- 4.9 MPs/m3 and that of anthropogenic particles 32.2 +/- 12.5 APs/m3. The main synthetic polymers detected were polyamide, polyester, and polypropylene, with lower counts of other polymers including the biopolymer poly(lactic acid). Particle size and mass distributions were parameterized by means of power law distributions, which allowed performing estimations of the concentration of smaller particles provided the same scaling parameter of the power law applies. The calculated total mass concentration of the identified MPs was 45.5 ng/L. The observed size distribution of MPs allowed an estimation for the concentration of nanoplastics (< 1 mu m) well below the ng/L range; higher concentrations are not consistent with scale invariant fractal frag-mentation. Our findings showed that MPs in the drinking water sampled in this work do not represent a sig-nificant way of exposure to MPs and would probably pose a negligible risk for human health.

Automated summary

The aim of this study was to investigate the occurrence of microplastics (MPs) in drinking water in Spain by comparing tap water from different locations. Tap water from 24 points in 8 different locations in Spain was sampled and analyzed. The results showed that the concentration of MPs in the drinking water samples was relatively low and would probably pose a negligible risk to human health.