Common vegetable extract found to remove most microplastics from water

An extract derived from okra and fenugreek can remove over 90 per cent of microplastics from water, according to a new study that may help develop safe ways to get rid of the toxic material.
Microplastic particles, ranging in size from a billionth to a millionth of a metre, have become widespread environmental pollutants in the last 50 years. They are produced during industrial processes or when plastic debris breaks down in the environment.
A growing body of research warns that exposure to microplastics, and in particular their collection in human tissues, may lead to adverse health conditions like stroke and several types of cancer.
Scientists have been attempting to develop methods to effectively remove these tiny fragments from the environment as well as from the human body. They have now found that the natural polymers that make okra slimy and give fenugreek its gel-like texture can trap most of these microplastic particles in water.
The new study, published in the journal ACS Omega, shows that an okra and fenugreek extract can remove up to 90 percent of microplastics from ocean water, freshwater and groundwater.
Natural polymers in okra and fenugreek as well as tamarind grab onto microplastic particles, causing them to clump together and sink to the bottom.
This makes it easier to separate the tiny plastic particles from water.
Researchers also optimised a process for making okra and fenugreek extracts. They made the extracts by soaking sliced okra pods and blending fenugreek seeds in separate containers of water overnight. They then removed the dissolved extracts and dried them into powders.
The powdered extracts were found to contain natural long-chain sugar polymers called polysaccharides.
Just a gram of either powder in a litre of water was found to trap microplastics effectively. The dried okra and fenugreek extracts removed nearly 70 per cent to 90 per cent of the plastic in an hour, researchers found.
A mixture of equal parts of the powders removed 70 per cent of the plastic particles within 30 minutes, according to the study.
Researchers said the plant extracts performed significantly better than commercially available synthetic polymers currently used in wastewater treatment.
When researchers tested the extracts on water collected from local waterbodies, they found that okra worked best in ocean water, fenugreek in groundwater, and their combination in freshwater.
'Utilizing these plant-based extracts in water treatment will remove microplastics and other pollutants without introducing additional toxic substances to the treated water,' Rajani Srinivasan, an author of the study from Tarleton State University in the US, said, 'thus reducing long-term health risks to the population.'

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Time Out

an hour ago

• Time Out

Our Story with David Attenborough

The seemingly unstoppable David Attenborough has achieved more since hitting retirement age than most of us - let's be honest, all of us - will achieve in our entire lifetimes. This new immersive film is his second major project since turning 99 in May, following his more traditional documentary Ocean. Produced by Open Planet Studios, Our Story sees the Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum transformed into a smaller version of the Lightroom in King's Cross (a sort of projection-based theatre). While 'immersive' is a word exhausted by overuse, 'immersive documentary' is emerging as a fairly distinct genre with clear hallmarks. As with the Lightroom's shows, Our Story is based around powerful digital projectors beaming the film onto the four walls of the space, wrapping around the surfaces so there are different images whichever direction you look. You are indeed immersed. It's still a narrative documentary film, in which Sir David tells us the story of the planet from fiery, lifeless rock to the advent of mankind to a possible future. Attenborough narrates, and appears at the start and end. There's a fair smattering of expectedly dazzling wildlife footage. But Our Story isn't really a nature doc in the style of Attenborough's most famous works, and rather than painstakingly captured original footage of animals, it uses pre-existing stuff plus heavy use of CGI to supplement its storytelling. Occasionally this feels like a minor letdown: though they're not trying to pretend they're anything else, some very obviously computer generated whales feel a little jarring in a documentary from the literal David Attenborough. For the most part, though, the graphics are used well to create dramatic vistas of space or primaeval Earth, or to offer more prosaic illustrations of Attenborough's words (collages of cave paintings or early depictions of agriculture). It will probably not shock you to learn that you can't tell the entire story of the planet Earth and mankind in any great detail in 50 minutes. But the Att-man knows what he's doing by this stage in his career, and works deftly with the time he has. A visually razzle-dazzly pre-life on Earth section; a gallop through the first four billion years of the planet before establishing that the appearance of man coincided with an unprecedented stable patch in the planet's climate; an explosion of nature footage to illustrate this; bringing himself into it as he describes the world he was born into and how it's changed over his long, long life. Climate change is accepted as a part of the human story rather than laboured over bombastically; which works, because the question of doing something about it is raised not as a hypothetical but an inevitability. And it ends on a hopeful note: the whales are an illustration of how humans can influence the planet for the better, populations of the aquatic giants having bounced back since humanity took concerted action to save them. A projected cityscape of a hypothetical low carbon future London is another dose of optimism. Whether or not Attenborough feels as optimistic about the future as he professes to be here, it's a more inspiring note to end on – particularly for young audiences – than declaring it's too late and we're all doomed. The final image of the show isn't a spectacular vista of space or nature, but a life-size Attenborough, sitting in his study: it looks like he's in the room with us. I wouldn't put it past him to still be presenting documentaries in 10 years' time, but there is something haunting about the sense of his physical presence – the show feels like a time capsule already, wisdom designed to live on after he's gone.

The Independent

4 hours ago

• The Independent

Revealed: The AI chatbot requests that cause the most carbon emissions

A new study reveals that every query to large language models like ChatGPT consumes energy and generates carbon emissions. Complex reasoning questions, such as those in abstract algebra or philosophy, lead to significantly higher carbon emissions, up to six times more than simpler queries. Models designed for explicit reasoning processes produce substantially more carbon dioxide, with some generating up to 50 times more emissions than concise response models. The study highlights an "accuracy-sustainability trade-off," where highly accurate AI models often result in greater energy consumption and carbon footprint. Researchers recommend that users reduce emissions by prompting AI for concise answers and reserving high-capacity models for tasks that genuinely require their advanced capabilities.

The Independent

4 hours ago

• The Independent

The simple test that could predict how long you will live

A new study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology explored whether a simple sitting-rising test could predict premature deaths. Researchers tested 4,282 adults aged 46-75 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1998 to 2023, to evaluate non-aerobic physical fitness, including muscle strength, flexibility, and balance. The test required participants to sit and rise from the floor without using support from hands, elbows, or knees, with points deducted for any assistance or loss of balance. The study concluded that non-aerobic physical fitness, as assessed by this test, was a significant predictor of natural and cardiovascular mortality. After about 12 years, participants with a perfect 10 score had a 3.7 per cent death rate, while those scoring 0-4 points showed a dramatically higher death rate of 42.1 per cent.