Hot or not: systematic review and laboratory evaluation of the hot needle test for microplastic identification

Abstract

Abstract Microplastics are small ( 70% of the time. While cotton and semi-synthetic fiber results were less consistently identified ( 90% of microplastics that we selected from environmental samples (water, sediment) were confirmed by Raman microscopy. It is recommended that researchers assess their hot needle test methods against known standards of both target microplastics and background materials like natural fibers, report the response criteria used in their studies and optimally include spectroscopic verification of results for higher confidence.

Keywords

• Microplastic
• Hot needle test
• Hot point test
• Melt test
• Method evaluation