The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) as a Source of Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment
Open accessAbstract
Municipal effluent discharged from wastewater treatment works (WwTW) is suspected to be a significant contributor of microplastics (MP) to the environment as many personal care products contain plastic microbeads. A secondary WwTW (population equivalent 650 000) was sampled for microplastics at different stages of the treatment process to ascertain at what stage in the treatment process the MP are being removed. The influent contained on average 15.70 (±5.23) MP·L(-1). This was reduced to 0.25 (±0.04) MP·L(-1) in the final effluent, a decrease of 98.41%. Despite this large reduction we calculate that this WwTW is releasing 65 million microplastics into the receiving water every day. A significant proportion of the microplastic accumulated in and was removed during the grease removal stage (19.67 (±4.51) MP/2.5 g), it was only in the grease that the much publicised microbeads were found. This study shows that despite the efficient removal rates of MP achieved by this modern treatment plant when dealing with such a large volume of effluent even a modest amount of microplastics being released per liter of effluent could result in significant amounts of microplastics entering the environment. This is the first study to describe in detail the fate of microplastics during the wastewater treatment process.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Hidalgo-Ruz, V., Gutow, L., Thompson, R. C., & Thiel, M. (2012) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es2031505 · Cited by 5,440
Lusher, A. L., McHugh, M., & Thompson, R. C. (2013) · Marine Pollution Bulletin · doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.11.028 · Cited by 2,075
Microplastic pollution in the surface waters of the Laurentian Great Lakes
Eriksen, M., Mason, S., Wilson, S., Box, C., Zellers, A., Edwards, W., Farley, H., & Amato, S. (2013) · Marine Pollution Bulletin · doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.10.007 · Cited by 1,937
Microplastic pollution in deep-sea sediments
Van Cauwenberghe, L., Vanreusel, A., Mees, J., & Janssen, C. R. (2013) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2013.08.013 · Cited by 1,575
Mechanistic implications of plastic degradation
Singh, B., & Sharma, N. (2008) · Polymer Degradation and Stability · doi:10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2007.11.008 · Cited by 1,569
Trophic level transfer of microplastic: Mytilus edulis (L.) to Carcinus maenas (L.)
Farrell, P., & Nelson, K. (2013) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2013.01.046 · Cited by 1,507
Microplastic – an emerging contaminant of potential concern?
Browne, M. A., Galloway, T., & Thompson, R. (2007) · Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management · doi:10.1002/ieam.5630030412 · Cited by 856
Synthetic fibers as an indicator of land application of sludge
Zubris, K. A. V., & Richards, B. K. (2005) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2005.04.013 · Cited by 723
Cited by
Horton, A. A., Walton, A., Spurgeon, D. J., Lahive, E., & Svendsen, C. (2017) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.01.190 · Cited by 3,756
Plastic and Human Health: A Micro Issue?
Wright, S. L., & Kelly, F. J. (2017) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.7b00423 · Cited by 3,413
Alimi, O. S., Farner Budarz, J., Hernandez, L. M., & Tufenkji, N. (2018) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.7b05559 · Cited by 2,668
Auta, H. S., Emenike, C. U., & Fauziah, S. H. (2017) · Environment International · doi:10.1016/j.envint.2017.02.013 · Cited by 2,649
Microplastics in Freshwaters and Drinking Water: Critical Review and Assessment of Data Quality
Koelmans, A. A., Mohamed Nor, N. H., Hermsen, E., Kooi, M., Mintenig, S. M., & De France, J. (2019) · Water Research · doi:10.1016/j.watres.2019.02.054 · Cited by 2,535
Metadata
- Authors
- Murphy, F., Ewins, C., Carbonnier, F., & Quinn, B.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2016-05-18
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 5800-5808
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W2405598407
- Cited by
- 2,096
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 47.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) as a Source of Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1021/acs.est.5b05416
- The paper
- Murphy, F., Ewins, C., Carbonnier, F., & Quinn, B. (2016). Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) as a Source of Microplastics in the Aquatic Environment. Environmental Science & Technology. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5b05416
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
