Industrialization over the past century requires large amounts of plastics. These needs result in the massive production of plastics accompanying improper disposal and management of plastics. The byproducts of these waste plastics were microplastics (MPs), which sizes are smaller than 5 mm created by various environmentally physicochemical factors, posing hazardous effects to the ecosystems. So, the collection, preparation, identification, and recycling of these secondary plastics were important and studied recently. Meanwhile, in the preparation or pretreatment steps of MPs, numerous chemical agents including strong acids and bases were used. Yet, the research for chemical resistance of various MPs to the strong acids and bases have not received detailed attention in published work. In this work, chemical resistances of four species of MPs (high density polyethylene, low density polyethylene, polystyrene, polyethylene terephthalate) to the strong acids and bases (sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen peroxide, potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide, lithium hydroxide) were studied. A certain amount of MPs was put in acids and bases and then kept in preset temperatures (25 and 70<sup>o</sup>C) and duration (one and seven days). After certain duration, MPs were washed and dried for chemical analyses to explore chemical resistances of the MP samples. Morphology and chemical structures of MPs after reaction with acids and bases were studied through SEM, FT-IR, and <sup>13</sup>C-NMR. And data related to these property-changes of MPs could be important reference for the future study of preparation and pretreatment of MPs using strong acids and bases.

Chemical stabilities of microplastics for acids and bases

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