Polyester (PET) textiles release millions of microfibers (up to 1-2 grams for fleece!) upon each washing cycle . These non-degradable filaments ultimately find their way to canals, rivers, the sea and sealife, including species for human consumption. The full extent of the harm to organisms or public health caused by microfilament exposure is still unknown. Although millions of tons of PET fibers are present, they are hardly ever detected (let alone quantified) in the vast publications on microplastics in marine environments. The reason for this “missing PET” lies in the combination of sampling, extraction and analytical methods used, which currently fail for PET. Using Dutch samples, we will develop the following innovations: • develop sampling and drying methods that quantitatively retain PET single filaments (Ø~10μm) • eliminate extraction methods (they are not suitable for microscopic PET fibres/filaments) • Introduce novel in full-matrix quantitative PET microplastic depolymerisation by transesterification with methanol/ethanol to dimethyl/ diethylterephthalate, followed by advanced GS-MS and/or LC-MS (down to 1 ppb) quantification (adapted phthalate methodology). • If possible we will try to integrate depolymerisation and analysis by further developing chemothermolysis by in-matrix in-line (in the liner) PET depolymerisation by transesterification. • The result is a high quality, quantitative, validated, fast/cheap, automatable method for PET analysis, eliminating false positives and negatives. The objective is to make this a global standard PET analysis method. The new method will also be applied to marine organisms (e.g. mussels) and food products. Ultimately, the understanding of the occurrence, fate and effect of PET microfilaments will aid in the design of textiles, washing machines and future (bio-based) polymer materials that are profitable and harmless at the same time.

“Documenting Africans in Trans-Atlantic Slavery (DATAS)” (www.datasproject.org) develops an innovative method to explore African ethnonyms from the era of trans-Atlantic slavery, circa 1500-1867. Ethnonyms index African identities, places and historical events to reconstruct African culture that is linked to a history of slavery, colonialism and racism. The project centres on the need to understand the origins and trajectories of people of African descent who populated the trans-Atlantic world in the modern era. The development of a method for analysing demographic change and confronting social inequalities arising from racism constitutes a social innovation. The team’s methodology implements a research tool developed in Canada for handling ethnonyms that can be applied in a trans-Atlantic context from France and the United Kingdom to Brazil, the Caribbean and Africa. This innovation confronts methodological problems that researchers encounter in reconstructing the emergence of the African diaspora. A methodology for data justice is salient because ethnonym decision-making used in our digital platform, requires a reconceptualization of the classification systems concerning West Africans. This methodology depends on an open source relational database that addresses important decisions that researchers face in the field about how to develop best practices and a controlled vocabulary for four reasons. First, scholarly expertise on West Africans is scattered globally. Second, the slave trade was transnational, rarely limited to one country or population, and the transfer of Africans across borders reflects this global relationship between colonial and colonized. Third, DATAS makes available a vast amount of information of immense value to marginalized communities deprived of information on their own history. Fourth, the trans-Atlantic and trans-national nature of this project complements the aims of a platform predicated on global collaboration. The project treats ethnonyms as decision making tools as a method whose concepts require rethinking entrenched assumptions about demography, data justice and research transparency.