{"id":1259,"date":"2019-10-14T17:25:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T17:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/exploring-the-efficacy-of-nile-red-in-microplastic-quantification-a-costaining-approach\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T03:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T03:50:15","slug":"exploring-the-efficacy-of-nile-red-in-microplastic-quantification-a-costaining-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/exploring-the-efficacy-of-nile-red-in-microplastic-quantification-a-costaining-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the Efficacy of Nile Red in Microplastic Quantification: A Costaining Approach."},"content":{"rendered":"

Nile Red (9-diethylamino-5-benzo[a]phenoxazinone) is a fluorescent dye that loves fats.<\/strong> It specifically stains hydrophobic polymer surfaces. This lets us quickly find and measure microplastics in water<\/a>, sediment, and even biological tissue samples using fluorescence microscopy. We can detect amounts that are too small for regular methods, like weighing or just looking. But there’s a catch: Nile Red can sometimes mistake other organic stuff for microplastics. So, we often use a second dye, like calcofluor white or DAPI, to mark biological material. This “costaining” approach cuts down on false positives, making our results much more accurate. We’re talking about improving specificity from around 70% to over 90% for common plastics like polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene.<\/p>\n

Stanton, T., Johnson, M., Nathanail, P., Gomes, R.L., Needham, T., Burson, A., 2019.<\/p>\n

ABSTRACT: Microplastic particles (smaller than 5 mm) are everywhere, and people are really worried about them. But finding and identifying all the different kinds of microplastics in the environment is a tough job. Nile Red dye is becoming a popular way to count microplastics, but people don’t always consider how it reacts with all the other particles in environmental samples. Here, we looked at how well Nile Red stains different microplastic particles, as well as common natural and man-made particles you’d find in the environment. To get better microplastic numbers with Nile Red, we also tried using a second stain, 4?,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI), which binds to biological material. We applied this costaining method to samples of drinking water and freshwater to see how much microplastic estimates might be inflated if we only used Nile Red. Turns out, using Nile Red dye alone could overestimate microplastic particles by as much as 100%. This is a really big deal, especially when we’re sharing information about such an emotional topic with the public.<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1021\/acs.estlett.9b00499<\/p>\n

The post appeared first on .<\/p>\n

Source: Water Feed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here, we examine Nile red\u2019s ability to stain a variety of microplastic particles and common natural and anthropogenic particles found in environmental samples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":87937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,29],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-water-filter","category-water-treatment","tag-ro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89472,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions\/89472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ampac1.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}