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Influence of intrinsic plastics characteristics on Nile Red staining and fluorescence
Summary
Researchers evaluated Nile Red fluorescent staining performance on 60 plastic particles from sandy beaches, finding that polymer type, weathering degree, and crystallinity did not significantly affect fluorescence intensity, but particle color did — with blue, green, and red particles showing lower fluorescence and white, yellow, and orange particles showing higher fluorescence. The findings suggest that plastic pigments interfere with Nile Red detection, complicating standardization of microplastic identification methods.
Nile Red is a lipophilic staining dye often used in the detection of microplastics in environmental samples. This work evaluated the influence of characteristics of plastic particles collected from sandy beaches (n = 60) on fluorescent emissions after Nile Red staining. Most particles presented medium to high fluorescence (81.6%). Polymer type (polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene), weathering (i.e., carbonyl index, methyl index), and crystallinity did not affect fluorescence intensity (grey value) or color (RGB values). Conversely, particle color significantly influenced fluorescence, with lower fluorescence seen for some blue, green, and red particles, and higher in some white, yellow, and orange particles, suggesting an influence of pigments used in plastics on Nile Red staining. Wide variations in fluorescence were observed for the same particle color, possibly resulting from the use of different pigments. Therefore, future studies should tackle the issue of the interference of plastic pigments in the detection and characterization of plastic particles.
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