Fluorescence photobleaching of microplastics: A cautionary tale

Nanoplastics prepared with uniformly distributed metal-tags: a novel approach to quantify size distribution and particle number concentration of polydisperse nanoplastics by single particle ICP-MS

“…spICP-MS can also follow the size dependent evolution of NPs in response to external stimuli. For example, due to the photostability of the embedded metal tags, 105 spICP-MS analysis can track the size dependent photodegradation of PMMA NPs exposed 300 nm irradiation in the presence of H 2 O 2 . spICP-MS analysis showed that the overall NP concentration decreased systematically as a function of increasing irradiation time (Fig.…”

Near-Infrared-II In Vivo Visualization and Quantitative Tracking of Micro/Nanoplastics in Fish

“…The DLS results confirmed the stability of the exposure system (Figure 1G). This was similar to previous results of the stability of AIEgenscontaining PS particles, 27,28 showing that NIR-AIE-MNPs overcome the fluorescent quenching and photobleaching of fluorescent plastics dyed with organic dyes 22,33 and are a stable MNPs model.…”

“…21 However, there are many disadvantages limiting its application, including autofluorescence of the organism, high background fluorescence signal interference, high detection limit, and false positive results caused by fluorophore release. 22,23 In addition, due to the internal light diffraction and scattering of tissues, the resolution of biological imaging and the range of applicable organisms was limited (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish larval, cell, and transparent organisms), and the deep tissue cannot be realistically measured. 24,25 A more recent approach is to measure the metal-doped plastic particle (e.g., palladiumdoped NPs) after digesting the tissue of organisms, 26 but the loss of latent spatial information is not conducive to in situ observation of the behavior of MNPs in vivo.…”

“…The use of commercially available fluorescently labeled polystyrene (PS) particles has been a prevalent technique so far to characterize the uptake, tissue distribution and translocation of MNPs in aquatic organisms . However, there are many disadvantages limiting its application, including autofluorescence of the organism, high background fluorescence signal interference, high detection limit, and false positive results caused by fluorophore release. , In addition, due to the internal light diffraction and scattering of tissues, the resolution of biological imaging and the range of applicable organisms was limited (e.g., phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish larval, cell, and transparent organisms), and the deep tissue cannot be realistically measured. , A more recent approach is to measure the metal-doped plastic particle (e.g., palladium-doped NPs) after digesting the tissue of organisms, but the loss of latent spatial information is not conducive to in situ observation of the behavior of MNPs in vivo . To date, the challenge of tracking MNPs in vivo and the need for low detection limits have hindered their measurement at environmentally relevant concentrations.…”

A Nanoplastic Sampling and Enrichment Approach by Continuous Flow Centrifugation

“…However, in biological exposure experiments, it was reported that these dyes can leach out and lead to fluorescence in examined organisms without particle uptake (Schür et al, 2019). A second problem related with fluorescence-labeled particles is photobleaching (Sullivan and Gugliada, 2018).…”