Special journal issue highlights effort to standardize microplastics measurement methods

An international effort to standardize the methods being used to measure microplastics in a range of aquatic matrices is chronicled in a newly published special issue of the journal Chemosphere.

The special journal issue, made up of 10 articles, reflects the work of 40 laboratories in six countries that investigated the accuracy and precision of commonly used methods for measuring microplastics in drinking water, surface water, sediment, and fish tissue. The final article in the special issue, which highlight the laboratory accreditation process developed for California to measure microplastics in drinking water, was published in April.

The international laboratory intercalibration, which was completed in 2021 and co-facilitated by SCCWRP, is designed to ensure California can measure microplastics in aquatic matrices using standardized methods that produce high-quality, comparable data.

SCCWRP’s Dr. Charles Wong served as the lead guest editor of the special issue, which complements a 2022 special journal issue reflecting international scientific consensus on an initial set of scientific products and health thresholds that could form the technical underpinnings for how California protects aquatic life and humans from the adverse health effects of microplastics exposure.