A cheap powder can help treat wastewater by rapidly absorbing microscopic bits of plastic pollution – and because it is also magnetic, both can then be removed with magnets
Chemistry 2 December 2022
By Alice Klein
Microplastics end up in our drinking water as well as in the world’s rivers and oceans
vovidzha/Shutterstock
A magnetic powder that can rapidly suck out all the microplastics in water could be used by water treatment plants to better remove the contaminants.
At present, most of these plants can remove only plastic fragments that are 5 millimetres in size or larger. That means smaller pieces end up in drinking water and oceans and are ingested by people and marine animals.
Nicky Eshtiaghi and Muhammad Haris at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, …
