Penn Engineering Distributes Microplastics Kits to Chinatown School

University of Pennsylvania researchers visited Holy Redeemer School in Philadelphia’s Chinatown on Wednesday to distribute microplastics detection kits. The team began a citywide effort to bring these testing tools to local classrooms, marking the school as the first recipient of the equipment.

Derek Ho, a postdoctoral fellow in the McBride Lab at Penn Engineering, led the instruction for the eighth-grade students. He demonstrated the specific procedures required to test drinking water for the presence of microplastics. The session aimed to provide students with a practical understanding of a pollution issue that is frequently invisible to the unaided eye.

The lesson challenged common assumptions about the sources of plastic contamination. Alyson Liang, an eighth grader, noted that the activity broadened her perspective on where these particles exist. “I knew it was in the water bottles, but I didn’t know it was everywhere,” Liang said.

Ho explained that the project addresses a gap in public education regarding this environmental issue. He stated that the team seeks to clear up misconceptions and equip teachers with the knowledge to pass the material to their students. “Currently, there’s not a lot of education around microplastics, and we want to demystify all these misconceptions and teach educators to teach it to their students, and that’s a tall order,” Ho said.

The initiative aligns with recent federal efforts to address the problem. Earlier in 2026, the White House announced a $144 million federal investment aimed at researching and removing microplastics from the human body. Penn Engineering had already begun working on the issue before this announcement.

The distribution of the kits represents the initial phase of a larger rollout. The Penn team plans to visit additional schools across Philadelphia to provide similar hands-on training in microplastics detection.