Study on the microplastics release from fishing nets

In this work five samples of fishing nets abandoned in the Venetian Lagoon were analysed to characterize them by the chemical and morphological point of view. Then, two of these nets were selected because constituted by textile filament yarns to simulate in laboratory a further consumption due to marine environment and the possible release of microplastics fragments. The nets were washed merging different textile standard methods for quality control. Then the washing effluents were collected and filtered on filters of defined microporosity. The filters were analysed with SEM and a statistical counting was performed.