In 2019 Sequoia published a short note on our website regarding the feasibility of measuring plastic particles in situ. Two main conclusions were drawn:
- If one considers the number concentration of plastic particles (α), and the sampling volume (SV) of any instrument used for measuring plastic particles, one can only expect to detect plastic particles when 1/ α >= SV.
- The concentrations of plastic particles in the ocean are typically two to three orders of magnitude lower than required when the SV for LISST instruments were considered.
Despite this, there are now (August 2024) almost two dozen papers in Sequoia’s technical library describing how Sequoia’s instruments have been used to measure and/or study microplastics in many different environments, cf. figure.
