- A report from a binational agency indicates the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement urgently needs to be updated to address microplastics pollution in the water.
- Scientists suspect there are high levels of microplastics in the Great Lakes because they're landlocked and closer to people, the main source of plastic pollution.
- Food packaging appears to be the primary source of plastics pollution of the Great Lakes.
Shortly after Chelsea Rochman started her faculty job at the University of Toronto, she began working with the Government of Canada to sample microplastics in fish from Lake Ontario. What she found, she said, shocked her. They found microplastics in every single fish they tested. Every single fish. And not just a few pieces of plastic, but averaging around 100 pieces of tiny plastic fragments in each gut.
To put this into a global perspective, the first research cruise Rochman ever did was out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. That’s roughly 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) from land. During her time on that project they found only one in 10 fish had microplastics, and if they did it was only a couple pieces in the gut. A few years after that, during her “post docs,” she started sampling fish off the coast of California and Indonesia. Closer to the shoreline, now they were finding microplastics, a couple pieces, but in one in four fish.
“I had a student walk in my office one day thinking that maybe he had done something wrong, because he found the microplastics in the muscle of the fish at much higher amounts than he expected,” said Rochman, about her research in Toronto Harbor. “There is research across the scientific literature showing that fish eat microplastics, and even that they move into the muscle or the filet — the part that we eat — but the amount that we’re seeing here is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It was quite shocking. And it was, I think, really interesting for my students to see me be shocked, because I had been researching the issue already for 10 years when I started working here.”
Rochman also discusses this distressing discovery in the documentary Ripples of Plastic, which is featured in the May episode of Great Lakes Now. She was also part of the International Joint Commission (IJC)’s recent report that points to the urgent update needed in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, to address the status of plastic pollution. The IJC is a binational organization established under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 by Canada and the United States to resolve disputes and investigate transboundary issues with policy solutions that help both nations.
Rochman said the reason why scientists suspect they’re finding such high levels of microplastics in the Great Lakes is because they’re landlocked. This means they’re closer to people, which are the main source of plastic pollution. Most of the smaller streams and rivers, where much of the pollution starts, eventually make their way to the Great Lakes where they circulate.
In the documentary, Sherri Mason, Director of Project NePTWNE at Gannon University, mentions how this issue is complicated because we can’t just filter out all of the plastics in Lake Erie without killing Lake Erie. That would mean we are filtering out all of the microorganisms that are critical at the very base of the food chain. So, it’s best to start at the source — with us.
Just keep swimming
After the release of the recent IJC report, there was an article floating around with a headline saying people might want to “think twice” before swimming in the Great Lakes.
After talking to Rochman and Mason, both experts said that while the microplastics issue is absolutely a problem in the lakes, the exposure from swimming is not actually something to worry about. Mason has been researching microplastics since 2012 and said she was one of the first in the field. Mason is an avid swimmer, a few years ago she trained to swim all the way across Lake Erie but only made it halfway after the waves got too big and it was no longer safe.
“I never once was concerned about increased microplastic exposure because of the amount of time that I spent in the water,” said Mason. “You’re not generally drinking the water. Does some water get into you? Absolutely. Especially when you’re in six foot waves (which you shouldn’t be), but that’s not going to be the primary. If we look at all the things that we do in our day, even if we’re spending a lot of time in the water in the summer, I would say if you were ranking your exposure, that’s probably not going to be in the top 10 — even for somebody who does distance swimming.”
She’s more concerned with our swimsuits. Since most of them are made of spandex, she said microfibers are likely breaking off as we move in the water. Although, that’s still not one of the pollution issues she’s “gonna fight first,” in part because she is a swimmer, but also because there are so many other things that are much, much bigger in terms of emissions of plastics into our waterways.
In the realm of summer recreation on the Great Lakes, Mason said that food packing is the main concern. She said their studies continuously show that the number one thing they’re seeing in waterways that are entering the Great Lakes is food packaging materials. This includes beverage bottles, food wrappers and really anything that stores food.
“We’re all outside and recreating all the time, right?” said Mason, about life in the Great Lakes region during the summer season. “And when we go out, we’re bringing with us disposable items, and so the reality is that unintentionally many of those single use products end up in the lake, and we don’t want that to be true, and none of us intend it to be true, but it happens.”
She said to think about the number of times something has been put in the garbage or recycling and then flown out. Or, on a picnic, how many times the wind picked up and blew away an empty bag of chips. Just last week, I had an experience with a plastic sushi container used four days prior that I found strewn across my front lawn. Right after use, it was placed in the barely full recycling bin, at least a foot or more down. How did it fly out? I’m not sure, but just because it’s out of sight doesn’t mean it’s truly gone and dealt with, as Mason pointed out, a raccoon or squirrel could get in and rummage around displacing recyclables or trash.
Tiny particles, big impact
To get an idea of how plastics become microplastics, Mason said: “We don’t think of them this way, but plastic products are constantly shedding microplastics, kind of like the way that we as humans are constantly shedding skin cells.”
She pointed to the recent lawsuit against Ziplock. A lot of resealable plastic containers as they’re being opened and closed, Mason said that “click click click” sound, each time that sheds microplastics into the very food it’s alleging to preserve.
There are other ways plastics break down into smaller and smaller particles. I was recently gardening in my city backyard, digging at least 4 inches into the ground when I found little circular bits of broken down polystyrene foam, often referred to as Styrofoam, one kind of the material that is manufactured by Dow Chemical Company. Like tiny feathery snow balls, once I dusted off the clay dirt, they kept rolling or floating away from the trash pile I put them into. I immediately thought of the last time I ordered takeaway and my hot food came in one of those polystyrene foam containers with a hinged lid. This material is made of polystyrene foam beads. They break down again after use, especially from exposure to sunlight.
It was actually a tiny piece of broken down polystyrene foam that brought Mason to this work. Before 2012, she spent 10 years working as an atmospheric chemist. It was during her time on the U.S. Brig Niagara, which she describes as a tall naval vessel that looks like a pirate ship, researching how chemical contaminants end up in the Great Lakes through atmospheric deposition (coming from the air and ending up in the water) that she became inspired to research plastic pollution as a side project. Then, during their first study getting samples from Lake Superior, Lake Huron and Lake Erie, something miraculous happened.
“I brought that first sample in and I looked down and I saw that piece of expanded polystyrene, and I went ‘nope, this is it,’” Mason said. “This is what I’m doing from here on out. I want to study freshwater plastic pollution.”
Mason said polystyrene is her second most hated of the plastics, but polyvinyl chloride (PVC) takes the top spot. There are, of course, health implications to all these microplastics. In Ripples of Plastic, Mason discusses how this manifests in fish: maybe they don’t swim as fast, maybe they have trouble breathing, or maybe it impacts their hormones and their sex changes so they can’t propagate. Many have heard about the recent study suspecting that people have an average of one plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics, just in our brains.
When asked to elaborate on why PVC is the plastic she “hates the most,” she said:
“You know, basically, there’s not a chemical on the planet that has chlorine in it, that isn’t bad for human health — with the exception maybe of table salt, but even table salt at high concentrations is bad for us. But you think of the most toxic organic substances, they all include chlorine. So, like dioxins and furans and polyvinyl chloride, is in that same kind of category, just because of the nature of those materials and how they impact human health really scares me.”
The chemical makeup of things like PVC and styrofoam, when they’re broken down into microplastics become really flat, which means they easily slide into our DNA and cause all sorts of genetic mutations, according to Mason. Most often leading to cancer, but it can also cause other kinds of deformations to human health and aquatic organisms.
When asked how close we are to being able to determine if exposure to these substances is triggering certain health implications, like a cancer diagnosis, Mason said:
“Honestly, I don’t know if… we’ll ever be able to do that. Just because of the nature of how difficult it is. Each one of us is exposed, before we’re even born, to plastics. They’ve found plastics, micro and nano plastics, on both the maternal and the fetal side of the placental boundary. And so if we’re being contaminated with these things before we’re even born, how do you say when you develop cancer at the age of 30 or 50 that it was because of this plastic? Right? There’s just no way because we’re exposed to thousands, hundreds of thousands of different chemicals, over those 30 to 50 years. And so tying it back to any one exposure is near to impossible.”
Not out of our depth
Part of why Rochman got into this line of work was to help inform policy. She said the report from the IJC, which advocates for the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to add monitoring microplastics to its assessment and management, will not alone fix the issue.
“The monitoring helps show us the problem, but it’s not very satisfying in solving the problem,” Rochman said. “But I do think it is necessary to make sure that our monitoring is effective” in order to find solutions and inform policy.
Rochman said a majority of the microplastics that they tend to see in the environment are tire wear particles that come off as we drive our cars or ride our bikes. Little bits of tires come off in the road and then wash down our storm drains and end up in rivers and eventually the lakes. Paint is also another common creator of microplastics, according to Rochman they find this in the environment due to things like road markings, boats or graffiti. She said the paint peels off over time and ends up in the water. Lastly, the other one is microfibers, or little bits of clothing or textiles that end up entering the environment with wastewater from doing laundry or even through the air from our dryers.
“There’s tangible solutions to these three things that don’t necessarily have to include changing the product, although I think that could be an upstream solution that could be something we aim for eventually,” Rochman said. “But a lot of microplastics enter through, in these three cases, our storm water and our wastewater. So, for wastewater, I’m not going to say that we need to upgrade the wastewater treatment plants, because they’re already really advanced. But for washing machines, for example, you can put a filter on a washing machine. It’s really effective in reducing the microfibers that go out of the machine and into the [treatment] plant. And you can similarly put one on a dryer.”
Along with encouraging political representatives in both countries to update the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to include the monitoring of microplastics, Rochman also suggests getting in the habit of contacting representatives to let them know their constituents want something done about these issues.
She also said that it’s important to remember that we make a big difference when we change our habits. Like using reusable coffee mugs, or bringing our own reusable produce and grocery bags to the store.
“I think sometimes we get caught in this trap of ‘I’m one person, it won’t make a difference,’” said Rochman. “But if we all said that, and we all have said that, then that’s why we are where we are today.”
Mason echoed something similar, saying the best way to approach this is with a “both/and” attitude.
“You can’t expect the industry’s going to change if you’re not willing to change, you have to do both,” said Mason. “You have to make the changes in your own life. And are there changes you can’t make? Yes, absolutely. So, you make the changes you can and then you push for regulation and changes societal-wise that fixes those other things.”
Mason gives the example of cheese as something that can’t be changed on an individual level. She said, it’s wrapped in plastic and so we don’t have a choice, and that’s something somebody else has to change — either through policy or consumer advocacy.
“I do think people find these environmental issues very overwhelming and daunting,” Mason said. “You don’t climb a mountain by looking at the top. You climb it by looking down at your feet and taking one step at a time, and then you end up at the top. You know, if you, if you start by looking at the top, you’re just going to be overwhelmed, and you’re never going to take that first step. And so, don’t look at the big vastness of the issue. Just think, well, what can I do today?”
Waves of influence
Mason said to think of how those little changes add up to bigger changes. First she started with one habit, and that was making reusable grocery bags part of her routine. To motivate herself, she made it into a game, if she didn’t remember her reusable bags then she would force herself to carry the items in her arms. Mason suggests starting with just one thing and taking the time to adjust to that, in order to not get overwhelmed by all the changes that could be made.
Another way, she said, is to think of yourselves as a drop of water, and how what you do spreads out. It ripples out to people that are in your sphere of influence. When she first started bringing her reusable bags to the grocery store, and saw other people around her using disposable bags, there were times she left feeling really depressed. Asking if this really makes a difference.
“But then I have to remember that every time I’m doing that, other people see me doing it, and then they go, ‘oh, yeah, I need to do that,’” Mason said. “And the more you do it, the more people are seeing it, the more these things become normalized, and then they become part of society. More and more you’re seeing people with their reusable bottles everywhere. When I started teaching 20-ish years ago. There was nobody. No student had a reusable mug with them. And now, every student has one.”
