A COMPARISON OF METHODOLOGIES FOR QUANTIFYING MICROPLASTICS IN SOIL

Plastic has become a useful tool for almost everything including shopping, cooking, organizing, decorating, and much more. It has unfortunately also become a significant component of our environment. An alarming amount of microplastics (less than 5mm,) are being found in our water, our atmosphere, our food, and inside our bodies. Since microplastics have been found in a multitude of places, our research focused upon the source of our food and fiber; soil. To date, most research has focused upon microplastics in water. To extract possible microplastics from the soil many methods were used including density separation, hydrogen peroxide solution, olive oil separation, the use of magnetite, and more. Our research found that there were signs of microplastics in soils from various locations even including farm/garden soils. We further found that not all methods of extraction of microplastic from the soil were equal, with some being more or less effective.