Fig. 5: Water-insoluble submicrometre particles dissolve during ethanol treatment.
a, Submicrometre particle concentrations (n = 3 replicates) in water (green bars) and after the addition of ethanol (blue bars) for PET nanoplastic reference particles (NanoPET) and particles extracted from six selected fabric samples. The contamination level of blanks (Lob, dashed line) was calculated as the mean blank + 1.63sd (n = 3 blanks). The original solutions were mixed with ethanol (1:1 v/v) and vortexed for 60 s at room temperature. b, Size distributions of particles in the original (solid lines) and ethanol-treated (dotted lines) solutions are presented up to a size of 600 nm for NanoPET and six selected fabrics. The signal intensity of the ethanol-treated samples is increased tenfold (except nanoPET) to facilitate comparison of the size distributions.
