Overview of analytical methods for the determination of microplastics: Current status and trends

Microplastics have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to their ubiquitous presence in the environment. However, there is a lack of published work giving a full overview of the detection of microplastics, including sample pretreatment, quality control, analytical methods and data reporting across multiple spheres. We reviewed the current sample pretreatment and analytical methods used to determine microplastics in water, soil, air and biological matrixes and found many challenges, especially in the pretreatment of human tissue samples. We summarize here the rescaling methods used to correct the incompatibilities in data caused by differences in the type of microplastic and the quality assurance and control strategies used to obtain more accurate and comparable results. We recommend frameworks for research into microplastics in water, soil, air and biological samples. Micro-Raman spectrometry and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry are considered to be ideal techniques for the determination of the number and mass concentrations of microplastics.