BayCEER Workshop 2025

Spatial Detection of microplastics in soil – a metal and fluorescence label study

Abstract

Agricultural soils have been reported to receive microplastics from various sources, including plastic mulch, wastewater biosolids, and dust. Several methods have been tested to analyze the concentration of plastics in soil, but only a few approaches have been done to visualize the spatial abundance of microplastics within an undisturbed, intact soil core. This research focuses on the use of indium oxide, barium sulphate, and rhodamine B as metal and fluorescent tracers for detecting microplastics in soil by examining the spatial arrangement of microplastics within the soil. We hypothesized that labelled plastics can be traced in soil by SEM-EDS and fluorescence analyses. Also, metal labelled plastics can be quantified in the soil using ICPMS, and micro-CT allows analyzing labelled plastics in spatial arrangement in the soil. Specifically, we would be able to verify the transport of plastics to the rhizosphere of crop plants (maize).

My poster will present the first results on SEM-EDS, ICP-MS, fluorescence microscopy, and µ-CT, altogether allowing for a 2D and 3D spatial recovery of microplastics in soil systems.