| Microplastics (MPs), which are less than five millimeters long, have recently been recognized as emerging pollutants in the aquatic environment. Fibrous MPs have their extremely short minor axis and coexisting interfering matrices in environmental samples make them difficult to be detected by the conventional Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy based method. A fluorescent staining observation method with Nile red has been developed for detecting fibrous MPs in wastewater samples, which are suspected to receive certain amounts of laundry lint from domestic wastewater. However, it was noticed that excessive number of fibers were often found in a sample, which were time and effort consuming issues for analysis operators. |
