Abstract
Highway stormwater (HSW) runoff is among the environment’s most important sources of microplastics. This study aimed to characterize via vibrational spectroscopy and quantify SMPs (small microplastics < 100 µm) in HSW runoff from a trafficked highway entering a facility equipped with a filtration system and in those flowing out to the receiving water body near agricultural activities. Samples of the inlet runoff (from the highway) and outlet runoff (the discharge into the environment) were collected in different periods to investigate potential seasonal and spatial differences. The sampling, methodology, and analysis were thoroughly carried out to quantify and simultaneously identify SMPs via Micro-FTIR to obtain a specific novel dataset to assess the environmental quality of highway pollution. A significant difference between inlet and outlet samples was reported; the highest abundance in inlet samples was 39813 ± 277 SMPs L.1 (SW10 IN; average length of 77 µm), while the highest one in outlet samples was 15173 ± 171 SMPs L−1 (SW10 OUT; SMPs’ average length of 63 µm). Polyamide 6 (PA 6) and High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) were predominant. Our results show that these HSW treatment plants, designed for managing regulated pollutants, can intercept SMPs, improving the quality of HSW runoff discharged into the environment.
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Acknowledgements
This research received no specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
The authors would like to thank the staff of StormWater Italia (SWI—Marghera-Venice) company, of DTU (Technical University of Denmark), and CAV (Concessioni Autostradali Venete) of Venice, Italy, for their support throughout the project, technical operations, choices, authorizations, accesses, and remote control.
The authors thank Miriam Zorzi of Ca’ Foscari University’s glass-blowing workshop for crafting the HSW outlet’s sampler.
The authors also thank Elga Lab Water, High Wycombe, UK, for the pure water system used in this study. The authors would also like to thank two anonymous English-speaking reviewers for carefully editing the proper English language, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and style.
The authors also thank the editor, Dr. Thomas D. Bucheli, and three anonymous reviewers for their attentive and insightful comments that contributed to the improvement of the paper.
This work has benefited from the infrastructural support of the Centre for Trace Analysis (CeTrA) of Ca’ Foscari University through the project IR0000032 – ITINERIS, Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System, funded by EU—Next Generation EU, PNRR- Mission 4 “Education and Research”—Component 2: “From research to business”—Investment 3.1: “Fund for the realization of an integrated system of research and innovation infrastructures”.
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Beatrice Rosso: Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Data curation, Visualization, Writing – original draft; Writing—review & editing; Francesca Sambo, Resources, Writing—review & editing; Stefano Biondi, Resources; Barbara Bravo, Resources, Investigation; Luca Vezzaro, Resources, Writing—review & editing; Carlo Barbante: Supervision, Writing—review & editing; Andrea Gambaro, Supervision, Resources, Writing—review & editing; Fabiana Corami: Conceptualization; Methodology; Validation; Formal Analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing, Supervision.
Beatrice Rosso and Fabiana Corami contributed to the study’s conception and design. Preparation of the sampling campaign and sampling campaign were performed by Beatrice Rosso, Fabiana Corami, Luca Vezzaro, Francesca Sambo, Stefano Biondi, and Andrea Gambaro. Beatrice Rosso, Fabiana Corami, and Barbara Bravo performed material preparation, analysis, and data collection. Fabiana Corami, Andrea Gambaro, and Carlo Barbante supervised the research activity. Beatrice Rosso and Fabiana Corami wrote the first draft of the manuscript and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Beatrice Rosso, Fabiana Corami, Carlo Barbante, and Andrea Gambaro edited the final version. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
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Author Barbara Bravo is employed by the company Thermo Fisher Scientific. Authors Francesca Sambo and Stefano Biondi are employed by the SWI group. These authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Rosso, B., Vezzaro, L., Bravo, B. et al. From the highway to receiving water bodies: identification and simultaneous quantification of small microplastics (< 100 µm) in highway stormwater runoff. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 61845–61859 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-35302-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-35302-6