Microplastics are the silent invaders of our world. These aQS plastic particles, measuring less than five millimetres, have infiltrated every corner of the Earth from the depths of the oceans, through the mountains and even into our own bodies. The harmful effects on human tissues are yet to be clarified, but what is certain is that there is an increasing number of microplastics in the air we breathe and in the water and food we eat, and that they can be a danger to human health due to their increased ability to absorb toxins and penetrate biological barriers within the human body.
Its ubiquity and the multitude of sources it can come from, including the decomposition of larger plastic waste or synthetic fibres from clothing, make this waste an unstoppable material and, once released into the environment, it persists for decades, entering our food chain.
How many microplastics do we drink?
In response to this growing concern, a team of boffin at the University of British Columbia in Canada has developed a easy to carry and affordable device that can accurately measure how many particles have been released from everyday items like a simple fictile water bottle. The low-cost tool detects plastic particles ranging from 50 nanometers to 10 microns in size in a matter of minutes. There’s no expensive and complicated process to wait to analyze the liquid, but instead, in conjunction with an app, the device uses fluorescent tagging to detect plastic particles that are obviously too small for us to detect with the naked eye.
“The breakdown of larger plastic pieces into microplastics and nanoplastics poses significant threats to food systems, ecosystems and human health,” said Tianxi Yang, the tool’s creator. “This new technique enables rapid and inexpensive detection of these plastics, which could help protect our health and ecosystems .”
Fast, accessible and reliable detection with your mobile
To create this device, the researchers created a small, 3D-printed biodegradable box containing a wireless digital microscope, a green LED light, and an excitation filter. They created a custom, AI-enhanced version of MATLAB software for measuring plastics, combined with image capture software.
The result is a portable device that can be used with a smartphone or even other mobile devices to identify plastic particles in a liquid sample. Plus, the amount needed is very small: this tool requires just a drop of water for examination and causes the plastic particles to fluoresce under the microscope’s green LED light, making them easy to view and measure. Anyone can understand the result of the tool’s processing if you’re curious about how much microplastics are in your coffee, for example. “The readout shows whether plastics are present and in what quantity ,” say the authors, whose study has been published in the journal ACS Sensors.
In laboratory tests using disposable polystyrene cups , results showed the cups released hundreds of millions of nanometer-sized plastic particles — about one-hundredth the width of a human hair and even smaller.
Although the device is currently trained to detect polystyrene plastic, it is capable of measuring other types of plastics such as the popular polypropylene or polyethylene; only a small adjustment of the machine learning algorithm is necessary.
What’s next?
The scientists see potential for mercenary this device in the real world, and for it to serve as a check to creating more plastic products, since, as Yang points out, “to reduce plastic ingestion, it is important to consider avoiding -based plastic products and opting for way out such as glass or stainless steel for food packaging. The foming of packaging materials is also important to replace habitual plastics and move towards a more sustainable world.”
The infiltration of microplastics into our bodies and the environment is a stark reminder of the common nature of plastic pollution. Reducing microplastic pollution requires raising awareness and education about the sources and effects of microplastics worldwide, policymakers carry out regulations to reduce plastic production, and improving waste management and reducing reliance on plastics, in the main single-use.
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