Standards Development

Scope

This document provides key principles for the analysis of microplastics in drinking water and water with low content of natural suspended solids using thermo-analytical methods.

This document is applicable for the determination of types of polymers and mass of microplastics in the sample.

This document is not applicable for the determination of particle size, particle shape and particle numbers.

This document is applicable for the detection of microplastics in drinking water and waters with low content of natural total suspended solids (TSS)[1].

NOTE However, the described detection procedures can also be applied to other sorts of samples. Whenever a laboratory applies this standard for detection of microplastics in water with higher contents of TSS than defined here, additional quality assessment and control (including preparation) is recommended to be applied to verify that detection methods are also appliccable for higher amounts of TSS.

This standard describes the detection of different sort of polymers, which are the main ones (most used in industry and most abundant in the environment) being: polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polystyrene (PS). These types of polymers can be analysed by all thermo-analytical methods. Depending on the used thermo-analytic methods, additional further polymer can be detected, such as polyvinylchloride (PVC), polycarbonate (PC), poly-methylmethacrylate (PMMA) polyamides (PA), polyurethanes (PU) and as well as signals from PS-co-polymers[2].