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Nanoplastics may have trackable metal signatures
Summary
Because nanoplastics are too small to see or easily detect, researchers are exploring a new tracking approach: measuring the metal and metalloid signatures (from pigments and fillers) embedded in plastic products at the point of manufacture. Using mass spectrometry, scientists found that different plastic objects — straws, bottles, bags, foam — carry distinct metal fingerprints that could serve as tracers to identify and locate nanoplastic particles in environmental samples. If validated, this method could dramatically improve our ability to monitor where nanoplastics accumulate in water, soil, and living organisms.
Because of their size, nanoplastics are hard to detect in the environment. These ubiquitous pollutants form when plastic breaks down. The tiny particles—smaller than 1 µm—are invisible to the naked eye or under an ordinary microscope. That makes it challenging to determine where and in what quantities the nanoplastics end up, and the risks they pose. Last week at the ACS Fall 2023 meeting, environmental health scientist Mohammed Baalousha of the University of South Carolina discussed a new way to potentially track nanoplastics in the environment. The method is based on measuring the metals and metalloids widely used as pigments and fillers in plastics. The signatures of those metals could serve as clues to detect the nanoplastics’ presence. Using a mass spectrometry technique, Baalousha and his colleagues characterized the metal content in nanoplastic particles they derived from objects such as plastic straws and bottles, polyethylene bags, polystyrene foam, and tattered