Dr. Cassandra Rauert

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93 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 30 Apr

Dr. Cassandra Rauert’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Science Friday · How do you study microplastics in a plastic-filled lab? · 30 Apr 2026 podcast

Background concentrations were 100 times lower in the clean lab.

So it drastically reduces any potential for contamination.

But what's interesting is that we still can detect some trace levels sometimes.

A lot of the plastics are probably what we're bringing into the room with us.

So plastics in the air, they tend to be charged.

We have like this particle bubble that surrounds us where we've got these static particles that just attach to our clothes.

So we can actually bring them into the room with us.

So we change into a fresh lab coat.

We have pull-up cotton pants that we put over our clothing before we enter the clean room to try and reduce this.

But there's always some tiny particles that you still manage to bring in with you.

So this just goes back to, as you said, they're so pervasive.

It's just plastics everywhere.

And that's why background contamination is one of the biggest challenges that we have.

Okay, I'm going to take a second just to think.

So some of the previous studies have either not accounted for background contamination or just haven't reported it in their studies.

And I think that's a limitation in some of the previous studies that have been published that we don't know if they're just reporting, say, something falling out of the air rather than an actual plastic in the sample.

But the other big problem when we're looking at what's in our bodies is that tissues and blood are a very complex matrix to try and analyze.

They're a very complex sample.

You've got fats, you've got proteins, you've got carbohydrates, you've got blood cells, you've got so many different components in this sample that you need to try and remove.

With our current analysis techniques that we have available to us, they're very limited in trying to distinguish a plastic particle from these other bits in the sample.

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