Weathered microplastics shed large quantities of plasticizers and newly formed chemical breakdown products into human digestive fluid. People often assume swallowed plastic fragments hold onto their chemical additives or shed them at negligible rates. Sunlight breaks chemical bonds across the plastic surface, converting additives into water-loving molecules that detach rapidly inside the stomach and intestines.
Inorganic & Analytical
Molecules, reactions, materials, and the ways matter can be changed.
Chemists synthesized intermediate-sized metal-organic cages by connecting twisted carbon linkers to palladium atoms. Flat molecular linkers normally assemble into either tiny structures with two to six metals or large spheres with twelve or more metals, leaving medium sizes out of reach. Inserting internal twists and offset attachment points into naphthalene and pyrene molecules forced the binding sites into the exact angles required for intermediate cages.