Optimized Extraction Methods for Pristine and Aged Microplastics from Complex Water Samples
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Efficient and replicable extraction of microplastics (MPs) and other anthropogenic particles from complex environmental matrices remains challenging. We tested and optimized the extraction of water samples with and without organic matter (OM) spiked with 9 MP polymers with 16 different morphologies and/or colors, that were pristine (63-1000 μm) and aged (300-1000 μm). Statistical analyses showed that OM presence most significantly influenced MP (300-1000 μm) recoveries, followed by the strength of digestion reagents, temperature, and exposure time. Optimal recovery of MPs in a matrix with OM of <2 g/L can be obtained with a single-step digestion of Fenton's reagent. A sequential combination of two or more digestion solutions (e.g., Fenton's reagent +10% potassium hydroxide) is recommended when OM >10 g/L. Recoveries of aged MPs susceptible to degradation were up to 6 times lower than those of their pristine version after applying the same digestion method. Thus, while the digestion method may be nondestructive for pristine MPs, weathered MPs could be partially or completely digested. We recommend that the characteristics of the spiked MPs closely match those of the targeted particles in real samples during quality control tests, which allows for the generation of robust and reliable monitoring data sets.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it