18622_Authority_August_Web

municipalauthorities.org | 7 I s T here P lasTIc In T aP W aTer ? T he G lobal T hreaT of P lasTIc P olluTIon Sherri A. Mason, Director of Project NePTWNE, Gannon University Prior to 2012 plastic pollution was considered an ocean’s issue. The field had just started to move from the water into the types of seafood humans consumed, while simultaneously moving into smaller plastic particles – ‘microplastics’ – as methods improved. Meanwhile, out on the largest freshwater system on the planet – the Great Lakes – a team of scientists (which included myself) were about to open pandora’s box; we had no idea. The year prior was the first time I sailed the Great Lakes – in a replica war of 1812 tall ship, the U.S. Brig Niagara – which led me to the reality that as much as we had heard about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, no one was looking in freshwater and, yet, we need freshwater for life. So, in 2012, we conducted the first ever survey for plastic pollution within the Great Lakes. We found that the amount of plastic within the open-waters of the Great Lakes rivaled that within the most concentrated parts of the oceans, with counts increasing as you followed the flow of water from Superior to Huron/ Michigan to Erie to Ontario. The vast majority of the plastic we found (97%) was considered ‘microplastic’. Microplastic is any piece of plastic between 1 micron and 5 mm in size (longest dimension). This is actually a huge range of sizes, extending from the size of an eraser at the end of a pencil all the way down to 1/100 th the width of an average human hair. Methods have now advanced enough we can detect even smaller pieces of plastics known as ‘nanoplastics’ that range from 100 nanometers (the size of a virus) up to the lower bound of microplastics, 1 micron. This is the inherent issue of plastic – it doesn’t go away. It breaks into ever smaller particles, but very little is happening to it on a molecular level. Even as a plastic item, like a bag, a bottle, or a pen, breaks into ever smaller pieces, it is still plastic. This isn’t true for other materials. A paper bag, for example, will completely biodegrade within weeks of being released (intentionally or not) into the environment. Glass breaks into every smaller pieces until it is back to being sand. But plastics – they can take decades to centuries to biodegrade. With the Great Lakes acting as the water source for approximately 40 million people, the next logical question is this: Is there plastic in tap water? In 2018 we conducted the first worldwide assessment of tap water, finding microplastics in 83% of samples at an average concentration of 5.5 pieces per liter. The shape (or morphology) of those particles – 99% of them were fibers – speaks to a harsh reality: we can’t filter ourselves out of this issue. Like little worms, microfibers can weave into and through filter materials, including reverse osmosis. The presence of microplastics in our tap water isn’t a water treatment issue – the issue is bigger than that. Surprisingly, at least to me, when our tap water assessment started being reported the logic that seemed to proliferate among the public was to drink bottled water instead. I couldn’t believe that the general mindset of people was that if you wrap a product in plastic, it would somehow have less plastic – so, as a scientist, I did what scientists do, I studied it. My research lab was the first to conduct a worldwide bottled water assessment. We tested the top 11 selling brands from countries around the world. Some brands are only bottled at one particular location, but many brands are bottled at sites across the globe but sold under the same name. For those, we tested the same brand bottled within different countries. From the 297 individual bottles we tested, we found microplastics within 93% of them. There was not a single brand, however, that was free from microplastics. That is, for each brand we generally tested 10 bottles. While Continued on page 46.