<
https://www.sciencealert.com/bottled-water-is-packed-full-of-up-to-100x-more-microplastic-than-expected>
'As scientists urgently call for studies on the potential health effects of
microplastics that make their way into our bodies, we still don't have any easy
and effective way of detecting and identifying the smallest of these polluting
particles.
So Columbia University environmental chemist Naixin Qian and her colleagues
have developed a new imaging technique to expose the insidious petrochemical
fragments for all to see.
"People developed methods to see nanoparticles, but they didn't know what they
were looking at," says Qian, explaining that unlike old detection methods which
can only provide bulk estimates of present particles, the new technique not
only distinguishes individual particles but allows for their identification as
well.
Nanoplastics are bits of plastic less than a micrometer in size, produced as a
side effect of many industrial processes as well as the degradation of larger
plastic products.
"Given the capability of these nanoplastic particles to cross the biological
barrier, nanoparticles, despite the seemingly trivial contribution to the mass
measurement, might play a predominant role in terms of toxicity evaluation,"
Qian and her team explain in their paper.'
Via Rixty Dixet.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
