{"id":140024,"date":"2022-05-31T19:23:55","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/water-treatment-efficiently-removes-nanoplastics"},"modified":"2022-05-31T19:23:55","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:23:55","slug":"water-treatment-efficiently-removes-nanoplastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/water-treatment-efficiently-removes-nanoplastics","title":{"rendered":"Water treatment efficiently removes nanoplastics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/water-treatment-efficiently-removes-nanoplastics2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a hot topic, at least on social media: tiny plastic particles allegedly end up not only in oceans and lakes, but also in drinking water\u2014and, yes, even in bottled mineral water. Eawag and the Zurich Water Works launched a joint project in 2019 to find out whether the tiniest of particles, measuring less than a thousandth of a millimeter across, actually find their way from lake water into drinking water pipes and therefore into homes, hospitals and restaurants.<\/p>\n<p>The results are now in, and they include some reassuring findings. In a report published today in the <i>Journal of Hazardous Materials<\/i>, the researchers show that even if untreated water contained considerable quantities of nanoplastics, these particles were retained in sand filters very efficiently during water treatment. Both in <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/laboratory+tests\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">laboratory tests<\/a> and in a larger test facility located directly on the premises of the Zurich Water Works, the biologically active slow sand filter was the most effective at retaining nanoparticles\u2014achieving an efficacy level in the region of 99.9%.<\/p>\n<p>So far, there has only been limited research into how exactly nanoplastics are formed. \u201cBut it would appear that the degradation of larger plastic particles in the environment eventually results in nanoplastics,\u201d says Ralf K\u00e4gi, Head of Eawag\u2019s Particle Laboratory. However, even the process of identifying nanoplastic particles is anything but easy. For this, the team of researchers from Eawag, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the Politecnico di Torino used labeled nanoplastic particles, whose route through\u2014or final location in\u2014the water treatment process could be tracked using a mass spectrometer. This process is similar to that used in medicine, where <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/cancer+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cancer cells<\/a> are specifically labeled in order to monitor their potential distribution in the human body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a hot topic, at least on social media: tiny plastic particles allegedly end up not only in oceans and lakes, but also in drinking water\u2014and, yes, even in bottled mineral water. Eawag and the Zurich Water Works launched a joint project in 2019 to find out whether the tiniest of particles, measuring less than [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}