MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

So under a microscope, today's tuna has visible bits of plastic in the meat. In this video they plop tuna onto a slide. But how would they prepare the slide? I assume they'd press/extrude a tube and then thin slice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwoma6Btu2Y

Thats a cool channel that one can easily slip into binge watching.

They use a well slide in this section but I suppose if you want to do this properly i.e. quantitatively I'd suggest you hydrolyse the biological material with hydrochloric acid, then centrifuge to collect the plastic bits and stain with Nile red followed by fluorescence microscopy.

I don't believe plastic can get into the flesh of fish or other animals and show up as filaments. They would need to be digested at a molecular level and you would never see strands of plastic in the flesh. Most likely it may have been in the stomach or other contaminants while processing.

Charles wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:40 pm

I don't believe plastic can get into the flesh of fish or other animals and show up as filaments. They would need to be digested at a molecular level and you would never see strands of plastic in the flesh. Most likely it may have been in the stomach or other contaminants while processing.

Yeah, you're right. I'm assuming this is a packaging issue, or a quality issue as to how the tuna meat is processed meaning part of fish digestive track got into the meat grinding process.