I got my county #water quality report with my utility bill yesterday. I've been curious about micro- or #nanoplastics levels and unfortunately nothing on that was reported. I assume they are not monitoring it. ☹️
#microplastics
Most states and local utilities haven't been. The new PFA rules came from the EPA's monitoring under UCMR(Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule) for example, and there's a chance they have data on your water here:
https://www.epa.gov/dwucmr/fifth-unregulated-contaminant-monitoring-rule-data-finder#data-finder
@BE What contaminants in here = "micro / nanoplastics"? My report did have all those listed. I would think there are many plastics that are not among these compounds. ?
Looks like the fifth is mostly PFAs along with Lithium. I should have linked you to all 5, and not just the most recent. The fourth is here and ended in 2021:
https://www.epa.gov/dwucmr/fourth-unregulated-contaminant-monitoring-rule
You might have some luck under the alcohols. 1-butanol, for instance, is used in many plastics and may indicate breakdown of plastics.
If you're looking out for something like "Here's the number of microplastics in x volume of water" then I don't think that number exists for municipal water to date. The EPA's in the early days of coming up with a standard test for that:
https://www.epa.gov/sciencematters/assessing-methods-measuring-microplastics-water
As of 2019 the WHO only found 2 studies on microplastic concentrations in tap water to date:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135419301794
If they take up the same pace that they did for PFAs then local utilities won't be giving a microplastics concentration number for another decade, at least.
If you felt like getting deep into the science of plastics breakdown and possible indicator chemicals, this is the paper:
@BE Great, thanks. I do like reviews. Very helpful.