Cleaning Products
Sources. Another source of microplastic is from industrial and domestic cleaning products that use microplastic as an abrasive scrubber (Browne et al. 2007). For instance, surfaces of buildings, machinery and boats can be cleaned and prepared (e.g. smoothed, roughened, shaped) using 'media blasting', where small plastics (e.g. polystyrene, acrylic, polyester, poly-allyl-diglycol-carbonate, urea-, melamineand phenol-formaldehyde; 0.25–1.7 mm; DOD 1992) and other types of granules (e.g. sand) are propelled onto a surface using a centrifugal wheel or pressurized fluid/gas (Wolbach and McDonald 1987; Abbott 1992; Gregory 1996; Neulicht and Shular 1997; Anonymous 1998). Although 'media blasting' has been suspected of being a source of microplastic to habitats there has been no scientific work to (i) characterize the number of industries using this technique, (ii) the size, shape and amount of microplastic used in the process of cleaning and (iii) the quantity of particles emitted into, or found within, the environment through this source.
More work has been done for microplastics used as physical abrasives in domestic products. Fendall and Sewell (2009) qualitatively showed that the size and shape of microplastic in such products varies (Fig. 9.2). By examining four different facial cleansers with labels that indicated they contained particles of polyethylene, they found that the size of the particles ranged from 4.1 to 1240 μm in diameter, and consisted of uniform spheres, ellipses, rods, fibres and granules (Fig. 9.2). For granules this presents a problem because it will be very difficult to differentiate whether they come from cleaning products or from the fragmentation of larger
Fig. 9.2 Microplastic (polyethylene) fragments found in facial cleansers (Photo: M. Sewell, University of Auckland)
articles of plastic debris. Using vibrational spectrometry Zitko and Hanlon (1991) found that 47 % of the mass of the contents of a single bottle of skin cleanser was made up of irregular fragments of polystyrene (100–200 μm). A separate study that used vibrational spectrometry showed replicate formulations of hand cleansers between 0.2 and 4 % of their mass made up of polyethylene, whilst for facial cleansers it was 2–3 % (Gregory 1996), though it is important to note that this study did not report particle numbers <63 μm in size, which may account for the smaller amounts recorded. Gouin et al. (2011) estimated the emission of microplastic from cleaning products in the U.S. by combining estimates of sales figures and assuming proportions of polyethylene were 10 % by volume. From this, the authors calculated that each year the U.S. could be emitting 263 t of micrometre-sized fragments of polyethylene from domestic cleaning products. Given that the type of polymer (e.g. polyethylene, polystyrene) and proportions of microplastic can vary from 0.2 to 47 %, it seems that more work is needed to test individual products and different batches so that we can provide precise, accurate and ground-truthed estimates of microplastic emissions from cleaning products.
Pathways. Microplastics used in cleaning products are thought to transfer to habitats through sewage and storm water (Fig. 9.3). The quantities of microplastic, however, in water or sediment from habitats, sewage or storm water are unknown because they are interspersed with large concentrations of organic matter, and because it is diffi to distinguish uniform spheres, ellipses and granules with a biofi from natural particles. Some of these problems may be overcome with the application of chemical techniques to remove organic matter (Claessens et al. 2013) and vibrational spectroscopes that can map microplastic in environmental samples (Harrison et al. 2012).
Fig. 9.3 Sources and pathways of microplastic from cleaning products into habitats. Gray arrows indicate hypothesized pathways. There are no black arrows because there is currently no research showing evidence of these pathways
