Dr. Cassandra Rauert

Okay, so there are a lot of challenges.

The problems with the microplastics analysis is that the field is so young in terms of the science is so young.

So really we've only been looking at plastics in the environment for roughly the last 10 years, plastics in humans for the last four years.

So we're very, very early in the technology and in the development to be able to detect them.

And this is really where our research is focused is on how to overcome these challenges.

So one of the biggest challenges we have in the field is background contamination.

You covered this really nicely in your introduction.

There are plastics everywhere and there are plastics everywhere in the chemistry lab.

But when we are surrounded in an environment that's full of plastic, these materials can shed particles and then they can get into the sample that you're analysing.

So it means when we've been processing the sample,

What we've done is accidentally introduced plastic into it that wasn't there originally.

Right.

Yeah.

So what we did, the first thing we did is we actually built from scratch a plastic free environment that we could process our samples.

So we call this the Mindaroo Clean Lab.

It's made completely out of stainless steel to try and avoid plastic in the paint, in the walls, plastic in the lino, in the flooring, plastic in the ceiling tiles.

There's plastics everywhere in construction materials.

So we had to build a slab out of stainless steel.

What does it look like in there?

We affectionately call it the submarine room.