How much microplastic are you drinking?

New tool can tell you in minutes

29-Aug-2024 - Micro- and nanoplastics are in our food, water and the air we breathe. They are showing up in our bodies, from testicles to brain matter. Now, University of British Columbiaresearchers have developed a low-cost, portable tool to accurately measure plastic released from everyday sources like ...

Understanding microplastics - with high-speed cameras

How microplastic particles spread in the ocean depends on microscopic details

07-Aug-2024 - Microplastics are a global problem: they end up in rivers and oceans, accumulate in living organisms and disrupt entire ecosystems. How tiny particles behave in a current is difficult to describe scientifically - especially in the case of thin fibers, which make up more than half of the ...

How micro- and nanoplastics are infiltrating the Arctic ice

Environmental scientist Alice Pradel cultivates ice cores in the lab to investigate the transport and accumulation of micro-​ and nanoplastics

26-Mar-2024 - “Beat the Microbead” is the name of a campaign launched in 2012 with the aim of reducing the use of microplastics in cosmetic products in order to minimise negative effects on the environment and people. For Alice Pradel, the campaign was a wake-​up call. “As a young environmental scientist, I ...

Bottled water can contain hundreds of thousands of previously uncounted tiny plastic bits

A new microscopic technique zeroes in on the poorly explored world of nanoplastics, which can pass into blood, cells and your brain

11-Jan-2024 - In recent years, there has been rising concern that tiny particles known as microplastics are showing up basically everywhere on Earth, from polar ice to soil, drinking water and food. Formed when plastics break down into progressively smaller bits, these particles are being consumed by humans ...

Microplastics in soil: Tomography with neutrons and X-rays shows where particles lay in soil

21-Nov-2023 - It really is a problem: Microplastics are everywhere. Now, an HZB and University Potsdam team developed a method that for the first time enables us to precisely localise microplastics in soil. The 3D tomography shows exactly the location of particles and the change in structure of the soil – ...

Assessing the toxicity of micro- and nanoplastics to ecosystems

Smaller is not necessarily less toxic

12-Oct-2023 - For most pollutants, there are standard protocols for assessing the risks to ecosystems. Despite the increasing concern about the harmful effects of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs), so far, there exist no harmonised guidelines for testing the ecotoxicity of MNPs. An international research team ...

Tracing invisible particles

Automated analysis of microplastics

28-Jul-2023 - How high are concentrations of microplastics in the environment, in our drinking water or in foods? Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed an automated analysis method for the identification and quantification of particles. Microplastics are everywhere in the ...

Detecting nanoplastics – in fractions of a second

Basis for new measurement devices

19-Jul-2023 - Tiny plastic particles are an environmental problem. They can even penetrate living cells. A method has now been developed at TU Wien to detect such particles quickly and with high sensitivity. It is well known that microplastics are a problem: They are tiny, barely visible plastic particles that ...

Contact lenses shed microplastics

New detection method discovers microplastics released by contact lenses under sunlight

19-Jun-2023 - Millions of people around the world wear contact lenses, including reusable ones. But these plastic lenses don’t last forever, and lenses need to be replaced every few days, weeks or months. Now, researchers reporting a pilot study in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have developed a ...

First comparative study on automated analysis methods of large data sets in microplastics research

27-Mar-2023 - The lack of uniform analytical standards currently prevents the comparability of data on microplastics in the environment. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have now, for the first time, compared two ...