On Oct. 30, Dr. Nick Roster spoke at a conference at the Hagerty center to summarize the current data from his research project on microplastics. While the research is still ongoing, he and his students have counted and processed the water samples from the first eleven months of the project. The purpose of the experiment is not just to test the concentration of microplastics in the Boardman watershed, but to see if there’s a pattern of higher concentration in certain months or in certain areas of the river.

 

Roster says, “We’re sampling the left, the middle, and the right…. A transect across the river to find out, is there a place in the river where we’re finding more plastic?” If the data shows a pattern of higher microplastic concentration in the middle or left/right bank, then samples from each section must be taken. However, if no pattern is observed, researchers only have to take one sample, which saves time during the sampling process. 

 

Information about when microplastic pollution is highest could help locals implement ways to mitigate the problem, hence why Roster is conducting the project over the course of two years to see if there’s a trend. “Flow rates are higher in the spring, they’re lower in the summer, but does it correlate? No idea. We need more data,” Roster explains. 

 

While there’s still plenty of data to be collected, processed, and cleaned, the current number of plastic particles found is alarming. Roster’s data reports “over 1.3 million particles in the river, and we sample a liter of water at a time.” 

 

Dr. Roster is in the process of extending his research to include air samples and is even working with Munson hospital to process samples of human tissue and placentas. “If you look around town, we have twelve air samples set up from east to west,” says Roster. These air samples are more complicated to process, so researchers prefer to use a fluorescent microscope combined with a dye called Nile red. Plastic absorbs the dye (along with organic materials, but those are dissolved in hydrogen peroxide) and glows yellow under the fluorescent microscope, making it easy to see the plastic particles. 

 

 

Research is still limited, but scientists around the world are beginning to develop a better understanding of the microplastic problem. For a long time, it was thought that microplastics take hundreds of years to form, but this is not entirely true. There are actually microscopic animals called rotifers that break down particles in their environment, which unfortunately includes plastic particles in many cases. According to Roster, “[it was] found that these rotifers are actually taking in microplastics and making nanoplastics at a rate of about 100 to 400,000 particles a day.” There are many other factors that influence how plastic breaks down, but they are clearly being produced more rapidly than scientists previously thought. 

 

The conversation about how microplastic affects the environment and the human body is still under-researched, but scientists continue to work hard to gain a better understanding of the issue and the ways in which society can work to change it.