Postdoctoral position: Monitoring of heavy metals carried by microplastics

You will be welcomed in the Animal Products Quality research unit (QuaPA), the leading research unit in France conducting work on the various aspects of the quality of food of animal origin. You will join the ANR JCJC VECTOR project (Chemical contaminant vectorization by microplastics during food waste recycling: the case study of insect-based bioconversion; 2026–2030), where you will collaborate with members of two of the unit’s research teams: Micro-contaminants, Aroma and Separative Sciences (MASS) and Imaging and Transfers (IT). With over 359 million tons of plastic produced each year, plastic pollution has become a global problem and the presence of microparticles (particles < 5 mm) has now been confirmed in all terrestrial ecosystems. These microplastics can have various harmful effects on the environment and living organisms, including humans. These adverse effects could, at least in part, be explained by the fact that microplastics can act as carriers of various chemical contaminants, whether these are additives, deliberately added during the manufacturing process to modify the physical and mechanical properties of plastics, or environmental pollutants, such as trace metal elements, which may adsorb onto the surface of microplastics and be transported along with them. Preliminary studies have shown that the concentration of chemical contaminants accumulated on microparticles could be 6 to 70 times higher than that in their surrounding environment. However, due to the analytical challenge posed by the simultaneous quantification of microplastics and the chemical contaminants they carry – often in trace amounts – we currently have very little data on this phenomenon of contaminant transport. Your mission will be to develop an analytical workflow for monitoring trace metal elements carried by microplastics in a complex biological matrix. You will be more specifically in charge of: producing model microplastics intentionally contaminated with trace metal elements; optimising a robust extraction method for microplastics contained within a complex biological matrix; comparing imaging and mass spectrometry methods in terms of performance and detection limits for the analysis of trace metal elements adsorbed onto microplastics.