New technique detects myoplastics in snow

摘要

The snow is gone in most of Canada for another six months or so, but in one way it hasn't been forgotten: as it melted, it left pollution behind in the form of microplastics and nanoplastics, which can measure from five millimetres in diameter to less than one micrometre in diameter. And given how small these particles are, finding and studying them - in order to learn their impacts on the ecosystem and on human health - can be very difficu for example, nets or sieves that are used to collect microplastic samples need extraordinarily small filters in order to capture nanoparticles.