Scientists have discovered that a cheap and common sponge they use to clean surfaces and equipment in their lab has a very high capacity to absorb bisphenol A (BPA).
‘It was an accidental discovery,’ says Wei Qiu, from the University of Massachusetts, US, one of the researchers involved. ‘There was a big tank of waste BPA solution and while we were testing some other absorbent materials we accidentally dropped a sponge into the solution. We were curious and when we tested the waste solution we found a significant drop in BPA concentration and the only thing that could account for that drop was the sponge.’
Interested? The full story can be read at Chemistry World.
Domestic sponge fortuitously found to soak up bisphenol A
The original article can be read below:
Consumer-grade polyurethane foam functions as a large and selective absorption sink for bisphenol A in aqueous media
Jie Han, Wei Qiu, Saumya Tiwari, Rohit Bhargava, Wei Gao and Baoshan Xing
J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015, 3, 8870-8881
DOI: 10.1039/C5TA00868A
