H/F 3 years PhD position

ICN et CEMEF

Overview of the project. Plastic pollution might lead to the degradation of soils, with major environmental and economical costs for agriculture. Considering the multiple facets of plastic pollution (contaminant cocktails including additives and non-intentionally added substances NIAS, added alone in mulching or closely entangled with residual organic matter in amendments). With a novel methodology based on a back and forth collaboration between polymer chemistry and soil ecology, several exposure scenarios of soil organisms to custom-made plastics will be explored in order to decipher their toxicity in different environmental compartments (rhizosphere, microorganisms, mesofauna, plastisphere), and evaluate their impacts on soil functions and on biogeochemical cycles.
This project is financed by Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

Context and mission. The PhD student will prepare various well-controlled custom-made microplastics and will fully characterize their chemical composition (polymer, additives and some NIAS). Possible changes undergone by plastics during waste treatment will be studied.
The physical aspect of plastic particles will be assessed using optical and electron microscopies. The chemical composition of the prepared plastics will be characterized by a combination of state-of-art chemical techniques. These techniques will be used to search for possible plastic changes in the organic amendments, in the bodies and feces of soil organisms of the incubated soil samples.