Hi All
Currently supervising an undergraduate project, and my student and i are struggling to find references that give any microplastic concentration in seawater in weight per litre / metres cubed. Most of the literature seems to stick to number of items for a given volume.
If anyone has a reference with a weight per litre value i'd be most grateful,
Thanks
Matt Bond
Hi,
I attached 3 papers where weight / unit volume is also used in addition to number of items/unit of measurement. Hope it helps.
Tomas
Hi Matt,
A big problem here is being able to accurately measure the weight of microplastics. They are so small in many cases that accuracy is lost in weight measurement because access to the type of scales needed to weigh such small amounts is so limited. The second issue - and the reson that 'number of pieces' is used so very often - is that 2000 pieces of plastic per litre sounds way more impressive/worrying/newsworthy than 0.04 grams per litre. In terms of generating concern about our plastic pollution, the number of pieces strategy is very effective and therefore commonly used. I would like to see weight used more often in the science literature (but in conjunction with number of pieces so that we can keep the general public on their toes).
Standardised protocol for monitoring microplastics in seawater
Technical Report · January 2019
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