I am studying flounder from the Thames and have found that they contain several fibres in their digestive tracts. I have a small sample remaining and plan to remove the digestive tracts and study them for microplastics as I have previously but would like to perform an acid digestion on the rest of the fish to test for the possibility of translocation. I know that several digestion processes damage plastics especially fibres. As such I have come to three possibilities: sulphuric acid, hypochloric acid and proteinase-K. I found a document online that said sulphuric acid digests plastic. If this is the case I cannot use it. I have also read that proteins-K is expensive, so may not fit in my limited budget. I would really appreciate some advice on possible approaches to extracting the fibres from the tissues of fish. FT-IR identified fibres as acrylic, nylon, polyethylene, PET, polyamide and polyester.
Hi Alexandra,
maybe the following papers will be of interest. (I am currently not working on tissue, therefore I do not have a more specific recommendation).
Vandermeersch, G., Van Cauwenberghe, L., Janssen, C.R., Marques, A., Granby, K., Fait, G., Kotterman, M.J., Diogène, J., Bekaert, K., Robbens, J., 2015. A critical view on microplastic quantification in aquatic organisms. Environmental Research.
Avio, C.G., Gorbi, S., Regoli, F., 2015. Experimental development of a new protocol for extraction and characterization of microplastics in fish tissues: First observations in commercial species from Adriatic Sea. Marine environmental research.
All the best,
Elke
Hi Alexandra,
I would suggest you avoid acid digestions that usually attack certain types of polymer (http://www.plasticsintl.com/plastics_chemical_resistence_chart.html) if not all. If you have relatively small amount of sample, the proteinase K is very useful, otherwise I would suggest using hydrogen peroxide at 15%.
As someone has already suggested maybe for you is useful read the papers suggested above. In addition i suggest you to read:
Cole et al., 2013. Isolation of microplastics in biota-rich seawater samples and marine organisms
Collard et al., 2015 Detection of Anthropogenic Particles in Fish Stomachs: An Isolation Method Adapted to Identification by Raman Spectroscopy
....if you need more information and exchanges of views do not hesitate to write me in private.
All the best,
Carlo
Hi Alex,
Interesting project, my advice would be that the only way you can be sure is to try yourself. The papers mentioned above are certainly a helpful starting point, but if I were you I'd perform a quick small-scale digest comparing the 3 methods on some mock fibres and then assess any changes to size, morphology, and composition (via FTIR).
You could also consider preparing some sections of tissue and perfoming polarized light microscopy to determine the location of fibres, in complement to your quantitative data:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X15002465
Good luck!
Steph
Thanks for all your help. I am currently talking it through with my supervisor. I'll keep you up to date on how my project progresses.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Asia
- India