Influence of Six Digestion Methods on the Determination of Polystyrene Microplastics in Organisms Using the Fluorescence Intensity

: Microplastic pollution has become a global environmental problem and is a cause of great concern. To evaluate the biological effects of microplastics, microplastics in organisms need to be accurately quantified. The quantification of microplastics in organisms using the fluorescence intensity is common; the digestion of biological samples is an important pretreatment method. However, the microplastics may be destroyed by digestion, which affects the fluorescence intensity of the microplastics and results in large deviations between measured and true values. In this study, six commonly used digestive agents were studied:KOH, NaOH, H2O2, HNO3, HNO3:HCl, and HNO3:HClO4. The effect of different digestion methods on the fluorescence intensity and surface morphology of microplastics was studied and the most suitable protocol was selected. The results show that, among the six different digestion methods, KOH digestion (100 g·L-1, 60℃) has the least influence on the fluorescence intensity of the microplastics and does not affect their surface morphology. The other five digestion methods lead to different degrees of reduction of the fluorescence intensity of microplastics and damage the microplastics' surface (aggregation, bubbles, scratches, and depressions). In addition, the KOH digestion method was used to extract microplastics from biological samples. The recovery rate was ≥ 96.3%±0.5%, indicating that the KOH digestion method is suitable for fluorescent microplastics in biological samples.