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Measurements of the inherent optical properties of aqueous suspensions of microplastics
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Researchers measured the inherent optical properties — including absorption and scattering coefficients — of aqueous microplastic suspensions at environmentally relevant concentrations, comparing different polymer types and particle sizes. The optical signatures varied substantially across polymers and sizes, providing reference data for developing optical remote sensing approaches to detect microplastics in surface waters.
Abstract Libraries of inherent optical properties (IOPs) of microplastics are sparse, yet they are essential for the development of optical techniques to detect and quantify microplastics in the ocean. In this study, we describe our results and technique for the measurement of the IOPs of microplastic suspensions generated from commonly utilized plastics. The measurements included angle‐resolved polarized light scattering, and spectral absorption and beam attenuation coefficients. We also performed ancillary characterization of particle properties, including size distribution, shape, and mass concentration of suspended matter. We observed several unique optical characteristics regarding absorption, scattering, and polarization properties compared with typical marine particle assemblages. We show that these results are useful for radiative transfer simulations as well as the potential development of novel plastic detection techniques from above‐ or in‐water optical measurements.
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