Solving the Nonalignment of Methods and Approaches Used in Microplastic Research to Consistently Characterize Risk.

ABSTRACT: The lack of standard approaches in microplastic research limits progress in the abatement of plastic pollution. Here, we propose and test rescaling methods that are able to improve the alignment of methods used in microplastic research. We describe a method to correct for the differences in size ranges as used by studies reporting microplastic concentrations and demonstrate how this reduces the variation in aqueous-phase concentrations caused by method differences. We provide a method to interchange between number, volume, and mass concentrations using probability density functions that represent environmental microplastic. Finally, we use this method to correct for the incompatibility of data as used in current species sensitivity distributions (SSDs), caused by differences in the micropl

SUBMITTER: Koelmans AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7547870 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature