PlastiTrax® Real Plastix provides, for the first time, a reference material that allows laboratories to test analytical methods using microplastic particles derived from real consumer products. In contrast to reference materials produced from pure polymer raw materials, these particles contain typical additives found in commercial plastics, such as fillers, pigments, stabilizers, and other additives. As a result, they often exhibit more complex chemical and spectroscopic signatures than pure polymer standards.

These realistic material properties make PlastiTrax® Real Plastix particularly valuable for the development, validation, and quality assurance of modern microplastic analyses. They enable analytical workflows to be tested under conditions that more closely resemble real environmental samples—especially with regard to polymer identification, spectral libraries, and automated evaluation strategies. At the same time, the defined particle number allows for reproducible assessment of analytical performance across the entire analytical workflow.