{"id":608401,"date":"2026-07-28T15:11:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608401\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T15:11:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T15:11:17","slug":"chemistry-in-pictures-echoes-of-microplastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/608401\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemistry in Pictures: Echoes of microplastics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-content\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">These blood-red clumps are what polypropylene microplastics look like in the body of a live mouse, as detected by noninvasive photoacoustic imaging. Most techniques for detecting microplastics in tissue either destroy the tissue or depend on the lifetime of radioactive or fluorescent labels, making them difficult to do outside specialized contexts, says <a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.ucl.ac.uk\/44538-stephen-patrick\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">P. Stephen Patrick<\/a>, a lecturer in medical imaging at University College London.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Patrick and his colleagues relied instead on the inherent absorbance differences between plastic and mammalian tissues. By shooting a pulsed laser at tissue and measuring high-frequency sound waves emitted in response, the researchers found they could map the location of pigment molecules found in plastic but not naturally in the bodies of living creatures. They tested the method by injecting microplastics from ground-up pen lids into mice. This image was taken 1 h after injection, but the plastics were still detectable 3 months later, Patrick says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">He and his team <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/advs.202512152\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published a paper about the imaging method<\/a> in May (Adv. Sci. 2026, DOI: 10.1002\/advs.202512152).<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Submitted by P. Stephen Patrick<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Do science. Take pictures. Win money.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/collections\/chemistry-in-pictures\/submit-your-photo.html\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Enter our photo contest<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/collections\/chemistry-in-pictures.html\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">See more Chemistry in Pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/staffDirectory\/Brianna-Barbu.html\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785251477_183_2025-bri.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"img-fluid\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 These blood-red clumps are what polypropylene microplastics look like in the body of a live mouse, as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[8410,18,440,19,5963,17,5018,75474,233346,232788,256970,133,98],"class_list":["post-608401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-analytical-chemistry","tag-eire","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-imaging","tag-ireland","tag-microplastics","tag-mouse","tag-persistent-pollutants","tag-photoacoustic-imaging","tag-polypropylene","tag-science","tag-tissue"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116998248901582003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}