2024-09-12 01:29:23
Nanoplastics are even smaller particles than microplastics, and probably more common
If we want to be picky, the term “microplastics” does not refer to the entire set of tiny plastic particles. There is a whole category of even tinier plastic particles: nanoplastics. Now some scientists are focusing on studying these. And they have bad news.
Much more plastic.We have long underestimated the number of tiny particles to which we are exposed on a daily basis. A team of researchers has developed a technique that can detect nanoplastics and, by applying it, has observed that the amount of plastics contained in bottled water is “orders of magnitude” higher than previously estimated.
Nanoplastics, as their name suggests, are nanometric-scale plastic particles (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). Specifically, they are smaller than a micrometer, one millionth of a meter. The new technique makes it possible to detect particles up to 100 nanometers in diameter.
According to estimates made by researchers, bottled water may contain around 240,000 plastic particles (with a margin of error of plus or minus 130,000 particles). Of all these particles, 90% are nanoplastics.
New techniques, new results. The team used a technique called stimulated Raman scattering microscopy. “Methods for viewing nanoparticles had been developed, but no one knew what they were looking at,” Naixin Qian, one of the authors of the study, explained in a press release.