The Xiamen Symposium on Marine Environmental Sciences (XMAS 2025)

Plastic pollution are increasingly recognized as ubiquitous contaminants in the Earth, and pose an ecological risk to both ecosystems and humans. Fresh plastics and debris enter natural systems and undergo various degradation processes, to gradually break down this material into micro-plastics (MPs) and nano-plastics (NPs). As plastic materials degrade (i.e. NPs), their ecological and toxic impacts become more complex. Therefore, the NP analysis and quantification is considered a critical step for further ecological assessments. Here, we successfully quantified mass concentrations of both MPs and NPs from cigarette butts (CGB) by leaching in aquatic environment, with pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). Our data indicates that the release of micro and nanoscale plastics (MPs and NPs) of smoked and non-smoked CGB significantly increased with time, and smoked exhibited higher release speed and number of MPs and NPs. Notably, the NP release amount from smoked CGB was 2.5-fold higher than unsmoked CGB due to smoked CGB with heat-aged fibers (reducing force displacement) causing more fragmented NP fiber production. Collectively, the study provided first quantified data that CGB can leach MPs and NPs in aquatic environments and suggest a needed attention and consideration of new global contaminants.

Cigarette butts,Microplastics,Nanoplastics,Pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry

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