Drinking water in plastic bottles contains countless particles too small to see. New research finds that people who drink water from them on a daily basis ingest far more microplastics than those who don’t.
I looked up what constitutes a unit of microplastics and the definition I found in this article was “any synthetic solid particle or polymeric matrix, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water”.
Because “microplastics” is a broad term that covers particles of varying size, structure, and weight, researchers refer to them in terms of number of particles per unit or total mass of microplastics per sample.
Great, how convenient that the latter option is based on mass, just as the OP requested. The researchers should clarify the number based on total mass.
I looked up what constitutes a unit of microplastics and the definition I found in this article was “any synthetic solid particle or polymeric matrix, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water”.
Because “microplastics” is a broad term that covers particles of varying size, structure, and weight, researchers refer to them in terms of number of particles per unit or total mass of microplastics per sample.
Great, how convenient that the latter option is based on mass, just as the OP requested. The researchers should clarify the number based on total mass.