Projet BASEMAN

Du 16 décembre 2015 au 31 décembre 2019

 

Defining the baselines and standards for microplastics analyses in European waters

26 partenaires dont IMMM (Fabienne Lagarde), 2800k€, 2016-2019

Project coordinator: Dr. Gunnar Gerdts, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany

Although awareness of the potential risks is emerging, the impact of plastic particles on aquatic ecosystems is far from understood. A fundamental issue precluding assessment of the environmental risks arising from microplastics is the lack of standard operation protocols (SOP) for microplastics sampling and detection. Consequently there is a lack of reliable data on concentrations of microplastics and on the composition of polymers within the marine environment. Comparability of data on microplastics concentrations is currently hampered by a huge variety of different methods, each generating data of extremely different quality and resolution. Although microplastics are recognized as an emerging contaminant in the environment, currently neither sampling, extraction, purification nor identification approaches are standardised, making the increasing numbers of microplastics studies hardly -if at all- comparable.

BASEMAN is an interdisciplinary and international collaborative research project that aims to overcome this problem. BASEMAN teams experienced scientists (from different disciplines and countries) to undertake a profound and detailed comparison and evaluation of all approaches from sampling to identification of microplastics. BASEMAN deploys cutting-edge approaches to tackle the two major themes of the call:

1) The validation and harmonisation of analytical methods” which is indispensable for

2) the “Identification and quantification of microplastics”.

BASEMAN’s project outcomes will equip policy makers with the tools and operational measures required to describe the abundance and distribution of microplastics in the environment. Such tools will permit evaluation of member state compliance with existing and future monitoring requirements.

 

More informations : BASEMAN