Noninvasive wearable electroactive pharmaceutical monitoring for personalized therapeutics.

To achieve the mission of personalized medicine, centering on delivering the right drug to the right patient at the right dose, therapeutic drug monitoring solutions are necessary. In that regard, wearable biosensing technologies, capable of tracking drug pharmacokinetics in noninvasively retrievable biofluids (e.g., sweat), play a critical role, because they can be deployed at a large scale to monitor the individuals' drug transcourse profiles (semi)continuously and longitudinally. To this end, voltammetry-based sensing modalities are suitable, as in principle they can detect and quantify electroactive drugs on the basis of the target's redox signature. However, the target's redox signature in complex biofluid matrices can be confounded by the immediate biofouling effects and distorted/buried by the interfering voltammetric responses of endogenous electroactive species. Here, we devise a wearable voltammetric sensor development strategy-centering on engineering the molecule-surface interactions-to simultaneously mitigate biofouling and create an "undistorted potential window" within which the target drug's voltammetric response is dominant and interference is eliminated. To inform its clinical utility, our strategy was adopted to track the temporal profile of circulating acetaminophen (a widely used analgesic and antipyretic) in saliva and sweat, using a surface-modified boron-doped diamond sensing interface (cross-validated with laboratory-based assays, R2 ∼ 0.94). Through integration of the engineered sensing interface within a custom-developed smartwatch, and augmentation with a dedicated analytical framework (for redox peak extraction), we realized a wearable solution to seamlessly render drug readouts with minute-level temporal resolution. Leveraging this solution, we demonstrated the pharmacokinetic correlation and significance of sweat readings.

Microplastics in drinking water: A review on methods, occurrence, sources, and potential risks assessment.

Microplastics in drinking water captured widespread attention following reports of widespread detection around the world. Concerns have been raised about the potential adverse effects of microplastics in drinking water on human health. Given the widespread interest in this research topic, there is an urgent need to compile existing data and assess current knowledge. This paper provides a systematic review of studies on microplastics in drinking water, their evidence, key findings, knowledge gaps, and research needs. The data collected show that microplastics are widespread in drinking water, with large variations in reported concentrations. Standardized methodologies of sampling and analysis are urgently needed. There were more fibrous and fragmented microplastics, with the majority being <10 µm in size and composed of polyester, polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. Little attention has been paid to the color of microplastics. More research is needed to understand the occurrence and transfer of microplastics throughout the water supply chain and the treatment efficiency of drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs). Methods capable of analyzing microplastics <10 µm and nanoplastics are urgently needed. Potential ecological assessment models for microplastics currently in use need to be improved to take into account the complexity and specificity of microplastics.

A review of analytical methods and models used in atmospheric microplastic research.

Microplastic pollution in the environment has become a source of concern in recent years. The transport and deposition of suspended atmospheric microplastics play an important role in the global linkage of microplastic sources and sinks. In this review, we summarized recent research progress on sampling devices, pretreatments, and identification methods for atmospheric microplastics. The total suspended particles and atmospheric deposition, including dust, rainfall, and snow samples, are the environmental carriers for atmospheric microplastic studies. There are active and passive sampling methods. Pretreatment depends on sample types and identification methods and includes sieving, digestion, density separation, filtration, and drying. The measured features for atmospheric microplastics include particle size distributions, shapes, colors, surface morphology, and polymer compositions, using stereomicroscopes, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Laser direct infrared spectroscopy and thermochemical methods coupled with mass spectrometry are potential methods for identifying atmospheric microplastics. Currently, models for estimating the fluxes of atmospheric microplastic emission, transport, and deposition are in the initial stages of development; their implementation will enhance our understanding of the "microplastic cycle" globally based on simulated and observed data.

Long-range transport of atmospheric microplastics deposited onto glacier in southeast Tibetan Plateau.

Micoroplastics (MPs) can be transported through atmospheric circulations, and have caused global attentions due to their potential risk to the environment. In this study, MPs in snowpit samples collected from Demula (DML) glacier in southeast Tibetan Plateau were investigated. The results showed that the average abundance of MPs in snow was 9.55 ± 0.9 items L-1, with dominant shapes of plastic fibers and films. MPs size was dominated by MPs <200 µm, with detected minimum size of 48 µm from the DML glacier. MPs in snowpit indicated seasonal variations, showing relatively higher abundance during the monsoon season than that during the non-monsoon season. The chemical composition of MPs and backward air mass trajectory modeling revealed that MPs in DML snowpit mostly originated from the atmospheric long-range transport, suggesting the glacier in southeast Tibetan Plateau can be a temporal sink of atmospheric MPs. The surface structure of the MPs was rough and adhered to a large amount of mineral dust and metallic particles, revealed that these MPs have undergone severe weathering during transportation and after deposition. Based on the MPs data, multi-year average precipitation, and glacier mass balance of DML glacier, the deposition flux of MPs on DML glacier was estimated to be about 7640 ± 720 to 9550 ± 900 items m-2 yr-1 and the export from melting water was about 5.9 ± 1.3 × 109 to 6.6 ± 1.4 × 109 items yr-1, indicating the glacier may be also an important source of MPs to the downstream ecosystems. These results provided the current status of MPs pollution on the Tibetan Plateau glaciers and new data to the study of MPs in typical cryospheric regions.

Microplastic characteristic in the soil across the Tibetan Plateau.

Microplastics are widely detected in terrestrial environments. However, microplastic features in the soil of remote areas are still sparse. In this study, microplastic pollution in soil across the Tibetan Plateau was systematically investigated. The results revealed that microplastic was ubiquitous in the soil of the Tibetan Plateau with an average abundance of 47.12 items/kg-dry weight (range: 5-340 items/kg). Compared with the published data of soil microplastic pollution in other regions, the microplastic pollution in the Tibetan Plateau was relatively low. Fibers represented 43.54% of microplastic particles detected, followed by fragments (32.20%) and films (23.78%). They mainly consisted of polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. Transparent and white microplastics were prevalent, and small microplastics (50-500 µm) occupied approximately 66% of all microplastics. High values of microplastics were found near Lhasa, Naqu, and Linzhi. Furthermore, microplastic pollution was found to be negatively related to the distance to the nearest city (p < 0.01), wind velocity (p = 0.014), altitude (p = 0.181), yet positively related to precipitation (p = 0.024). This work presents new insights into the magnitude of microplastics contamination in the soil across the Tibetan Plateau and supplies valuable data for future research on ecotoxicology, ecosystem impacts, and earth system feedback of microplastics on terrestrial ecosystems.

Research progresses of microplastic pollution in freshwater systems.

Microplastics (MPs) have received widespread attention as an emerging environmental pollutant. They are ubiquitous in the freshwater system, causing a global environmental issue. The current features and perspectives of MPs in the freshwater systems can provide the concerns of their ecological effects, which has not been addressed widely. Therefore, in this study, we reviewed the characteristics of MPs in freshwater environments and discussed their sources and potential impacts. The abundance of MPs in freshwater system ranged from approximately 3-6 orders of magnitude in different regions. There colors were mainly white and transparent, with polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) as the major polymers. The main shape of these MPs was fibers with dominant size of less than 1 mm. Analysis indicated MPs in freshwater system mostly originated from human activities such as sewage discharge in highly contaminated areas, while atmospheric long-distance transport and precipitation deposition played an important role in remote areas. Freshwater MPs pollutants also affected drinking water and aquatic organisms. Because the abundance of MPs in organisms was relatively balanced, the pollution level of biological MP pollution cannot accurately characterize the pollution status in the watershed currently. Future research should focus and strengthen on periodic monitoring to characterize the temporal and spatial changes of MPs, and enhance toxicological research to explore MPs pollution impact on biota and humans.