Dr. Karl Aspelund, Dr. Izabela Luiza Ciesielska-Wrobel, and Dr. Seray Ergene discussing the consequences of textile-related microplastics.
URI College of Business faculty discussed microplastics in the textile industry for URI Alumni’s Faculty Office Hours event. The panel, which consisted of Dr. Izabela Luiza Ciesielska-Wrobel and Dr. Seray Ergene, and moderator, Dr. Karl Aspelund analyzed the impacts of microplastics on the environment and implications for policymakers, industry leaders, and consumers.
Microplastics are plastic particles that are smaller than 5,000 micron and are found primarily in bodies of water. In our oceans, microplastics are the result of the degradation of larger pieces of plastic which is triggered by oceanic conditions such as water turbulence. Although a majority of microplastics result from degradation, microplastics can also enter our waterways through other avenues.
Microfibers, a textile byproduct, are another contributor to microplastics in our ocean. Textiles from synthetic materials like polyester and acrylic release microfibers when they are washed, and these microfibers end up in bodies of water. Due to their size, microplastics cannot easily be removed. Dr. Ciesielska-Wrobel explained that ocean water can be filtered to remove microplastics, but the process also removes microorganisms from their environment and disrupts the oceanic ecosystems.
Although filtering microfibers and microplastics out of water may not be feasible, there are other ways to reduce plastic pollution. One solution includes using washing machine filters that catch microfibers post-wash cycle. This method, although costly, is a way consumers can make an impact at home.
The panel encouraged policymakers and industry leaders to think about the environment as a stakeholder and change the way we consume plastics. Dr. Ergene noted that “some materials may be good for humans and durable for our use; but we also need to consider animals, plants, and the natural environment and the impact on them.”
As microplastics continue to be an issue for our oceans and environment, URI’s ongoing research aims to find solutions to the problem.
Dr. Irene Andreu loading a sample in the transmission electron microscope.
The Rhode Island Consortium for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (RIN2), the Surface Analysis Laboratory and the COE Analytical Core Facility invite you and your colleagues to a free seminar series describing theory and applications of the newest techniques available to you in the URI College of Engineering. Experts will answer your questions and introduce new and experienced scientists to instrumentation and technology available at the URI COE core facilities.
Melissa Omand, Associate Professor of Oceanography in the Graduate School of Oceanography, holding a minion float developed in her lab to capture particle sized data from the ocean twilight zone.
Networked, often expendable, devices have revolutionized how we access ocean data for applications across research and marine sectors. These instruments are often made of non-degradable plastic components, and at the end of life, they become marine debris. An interdisciplinary team of microbiologists, materials scientists, engineers, and oceanographers from three academic institutions together with industry partners, are working together to develop ‘self-destructing’ ocean instruments made from engineering biomaterials that will rapidly degrade in oceanic conditions once data collection is complete. Novel materials such as these will help achieve a more sustainable era of ocean research.
Chelsea Rochman (University of Toronto) will speak about the story of plastic pollution
From September through December 2021, the URI annual Honors Colloquium, “Sustaining Our Shores, offers a series of events with prominent experts discussing climate change and coasts in crisis, future of seafood and plastics and marine pollution. Coasts around the world vary greatly in form and function, but they are all changing. With over 50% of the world’s population living near the coast, change not only means the loss of unique habitats but also has profound economic and social consequences. The URI Honors Colloquium will foster a critical conversation on the coast – an important topic for the Ocean State and other global shorelines. Aligned with the UN Decade of Ocean Science, it’s a key opportunity for all to listen, learn and take a leap into action.
Coleen Suckling, Assistant Professor in Sustainable Aquaculture. Photo credit: Jason Jaacks.
Researchers Coleen Suckling and Andrew Davies working with group at the Zoological Society London, Bangor University in Wales
(Article by Dave Lavallee reposted with permission from URI News)
University of Rhode Island researchers Andrew Davies and Coleen Suckling say that when a major hurricane churns up storm surges and heavy, drenching rains, the storm washes trash from the land into our rivers and coasts.
Among the items being transported are plastics, the ubiquitous consumer material that is found in many products and packaging. The problem is that plastic takes an exceptionally long time to break down in the natural environment. Some plastic trash ends up in harbors, estuaries and on land. But much of it continues to be circulated throughout the ocean and can settle onto the seafloor.
At the root of global climate change and the worldwide plastics pollution problem are two related carbon-based fuels — oil and natural gas. Not only are the two among the key drivers of climate change, they are instrumental in the manufacturing of plastics. As storms intensify and become more frequent, the movement of trash from land to our oceans, and vice versa, is only going to get worse.
Now URI colleagues Davies, associate professor of biological sciences, and Suckling, assistant professor of sustainable aquaculture, are part of an international team of researchers including those from the Zoological Society London and Bangor University in Wales examining an often overlooked phenomenon, the compounding effect of climate change and plastics.
The team identified three significant ways in which the climate crisis and plastics pollution are connected, with the first being how plastic contributes to global greenhouse gases from production through disposal. The second demonstrates how extreme weather, like hurricanes and floods, will disperse and worsen pollution. The third is the effect that climate change and plastics pollution can have on marine species and ecosystems that are vulnerable to both.
The study was led by Helen Ford, a Ph.D. student at Bangor University, who worked with Davies and Suckling when they were at Bangor. The team published its results in a September article in the journal, Science of the Total Environment. Professor Heather Koldewey, senior technical specialist at the Zoological Society London, was the lead author.
“Climate change is undoubtedly one of the most critical global threats of our time,” Koldewey said in a press announcement issued by the zoological society. “Plastic pollution is also having a global impact; from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest parts of the ocean. Both are having a detrimental effect on ocean biodiversity; with climate change heating ocean temperatures and bleaching coral reefs, to plastic damaging habitats and injuring or killing marine species. It’s not a case of which issue is most important, it’s recognizing that the two crises are interconnected and require joint solutions.”
Davies said Ford organized the international team that conducted the study. “The premise of the paper addresses the fact that so many people view plastics pollution and climate change as separate things when they are not,” Davies said. “They arise from the same principal material, oil.
“Climate change and plastic pollution have many similarities, including how we need to address them. We need international collaborations to address this problem, which essentially stems from the over-consumption of finite resources.”
A key issue, according to Suckling, is the transport of plastics and microplastics over vast distances. She said that the Japan earthquake and resulting tsunami of 2011 transported materials all the way to Hawaii. The same thing happens with storms, she said.
Suckling had witnessed Storm Emma when she was in North Wales, which ripped apart one of the marinas during 2018.
“The whole area was flooded with floating white polystyrene particles. The storm had split apart the walkway floating platforms in this marina and spilled out the polystyrene contents, posing a pollution risk,” Suckling said. “This was at a site where an invasive species was being controlled, but plastics which spread from the site could increase the risk of transporting this invasive species.”
Suckling said scientists are researching the ability of plastics to transport invasive species hundreds of miles.
“Since Hurricanes Henri and Ida, we have been looking at storm-induced transport of plastics,” Davies said. “We sent our students out to collect samples from Narragansett Bay before and after the storms so we could start seeing what the impact would be. We are working on that data now. We want to see what the impact of these storms is on plastics in our oceans.
“The great thing about Narragansett Bay is it is so well studied. We are building on 60 years of research at URI or even longer,” Davies said.
Davies also said the state’s expertise in this area, including its universities and administrative agencies, make Rhode Island an ideal place to do the work.
“We have a wide range of disciplines, a relatively small number of stakeholders and a wide range of habitats,” he said.
Since coming to URI, Suckling has published two papers on the impact of microplastics on marine life, particularly sea urchins. One of them, which addresses how sea urchins with different diet habits respond to eating microplastics, was published in the September 2020 online edition of Science of the Total Environment.
“It’s still a relatively new area of science, where we still have much to understand. My work has shown that when we look at sea urchin species with slightly different feeding habits, we observe species-specific responses to ingesting microplastics,” Suckling said.
This highlights that feeding habits could act as a potential indicator for sensitivity to microplastic ingestion, which could be important for impact assessments of plastic pollution and management strategies, according to Suckling.
In the meantime, Davies is leading a Rhode Island Sea Grant project working with Suckling that is examining the links between climate change and plastics.
“What no one has really done until now is quick-start the conversation about plastics and climate change in a concerted way,” Suckling said. “We expect over the next several years, a lot more research will be done in the area.”
Suckling said if marine ecosystems or organisms are already at the brink of what they can handle because of climate change, throwing additional problems at them could push them past their threshold of what they can cope with.
Graphic illustration of the link between climate change and marine plastic pollution. Image credit: “Science of the Total Environment,” Volume 806, Part 1, Elsevier.
Dr. Peter J. Snyder, URI Vice President for Research & Economic Development, led the design and creation of the Plastics: Land to Sea COLAB. Photo credit: Beau Jones.
From Sri Lanka to Ghana and from the Arctic to Block Island, URI’s research and outreach have addressed the health of fisheries, climate resilience, sustainable energy and the presence of plastics in every ecosystem — land to sea. The University now plans to leverage those partnerships and cultivate new ones to advance plastics research via its Plastics: Land to Sea COLAB. The COLAB already includes more than 50 faculty working with state, regional and international governments, universities, and agencies around the world.
Plastics play an important role in society and can be lifesaving, but they were not seen as a pollutant when they were developed. Yet, the environmental and economic reality of plastics pollution is a global crisis that has outpaced our understanding of its impacts on our waterways, food web, air quality and human health. Science Approximately 420 million metric tons of plastics were produced worldwide, with production expected to triple by 2050. Less than 10 percent of plastic trash produced has been recycled, and it is the fastest growing component of municipal waste.
URI scientists and students have extensive research on one of the most well-studied resources, Narragansett Bay. They have collected and archived baseline data that are rare and difficult to find for many water bodies and have launched long-term studies that have run continuously since 1959.
The Plastics: Land to Sea COLAB is housed in URI Coastal Institute and will welcome participation by faculty and students across all URI colleges to make clear, tangible projects within the five “thrust areas”. Please join us as the University “thinks big” to accelerate critical research efforts and contribute to global solutions to sustain the health of our land, our waters, our health, and our future.
Bees play a vital ecological and economic role. In addition to providing honey, they pollinate fruit and vegetable crops which is vital to maintaining our food supply. Honeybees are designed to collect particulates from the environment. Their branched hairs on their bodies are perfectly suited to collect nectar and pollen from flowering plants. Honeybees covered in pollen will groom themselves and compress collected pollen along with any debris into pollen packs on their hind legs to carry back to the nest. The tendency of honeybees to collect non-pollen debris particulates from the environment was vital to the unraveling of honey bee language in post-World War II Germany. Lindauer first observed dancing honeybees coated in flour, brick dust and soot reporting potential hive locations to a collected swarm in a grain mill, collapsed building and chimney, respectively.
The URI research team used the same basic ability of honeybees to gather non-pollen particulates to detect microplasticin the environment. URI entomology Professor Steven Alm and URI Associate Professor of Chemistry, Matthew Kiesewetter, are exploring a novel approach to tracking microplastic emissions that starts at URI’s East Farm’s Bumblebee Garden and hopes to leverage a world-wide network of honeybees.
The sources of microplastics are ultimately terrestrial and have been detected in wind/air currents and distributed overlarge surface areas. The challenge of detecting microplastics terrestrial distribution can be supported by the assistance of the honeybees populations. Honeybees forage from 2-5 miles from their hives, sampling an area of 12-75 square miles.There are approximately 2.5 million managed and well distributed honey bee colonies in the US. The collection of a single beehive coupled to an existing worldwide network of managed colonies is a ready-made tool for tracking microplastic emissions.
To support URI’s Bumblebee Garden and its plastics research, please donate today.
URI student Casey Johnson. Photo credit: Beau Jones
Microplastics prepared to be analyzed by scanning electron microscopy. Photo by Beau Jones
written by CHRIS BARRETT ’08 for URI’s Momentum: Research & Innovation Magazine, Spring 2021
When plastics break apart, the material leaves a trail of pieces often visible only with specialized equipment. That’s where the University’s core facilities and their researchers step in with equipment and expertise. To understand the role of plastics in our world, imaging equipment housed within the University of Rhode Island’s (URI) core facilities analyze plastic particles so small that it would be like finding a single drop of water in an Olympic sized pool.
Scientists leverage that data to trace plastics pollution in waterways to its source, to understand how plastic particles harm animals, as well as to develop nanoplastics that deliver life-saving medicines into our bodies. “People are looking at microplastics in a lot of different areas; they are popping up everywhere and we don’t know if they’re good, bad or neutral,” said Rhode Island Consortium of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Director Irene Andreu.
Yet, looking at micro and nanoplastics poses significant challenges. Plastics comprise a wide variety of polymers with additives to change their texture, rigidity and color. When plastics break apart, the material leaves a trail of pieces often visible only with specialized equipment. That’s where the University’s core facilities and their researchers step in with equipment and expertise.
Participate in the critical coastal conversations with experts discussing climate change and coasts in crisis, future of seafood and plastics and marine pollution. Get tickets here or watch the first of series, “Coasts in Crisis: Our Relationship with Rising Seas” by Dr. Kelsey Leonard below.
