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The Great Lakes have some of the worst microplastics pollution in the world - so what?

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Tiny plastic particles called microplastics have been found all over the world, including in the Great Lakes.

Dr. Sherri Mason is an expert on microplastics who has studied their prevalence in the Great Lakes.

Dr. Mason spoke with Ben Thorp about her research.

Ben: Can you talk a little bit about what the microplastics break down into and then how long do these tiny, tiny plastic particles remain in the environment as far as we know?

Mason: So, plastic. If you think about all the plastic items as you go through the day, it’s the bags and the bottles and the straws. I’m staying at a hotel and I went down to have breakfast and everything was styrofoam so I didn’t eat breakfast. It’s all of those macroplastic items. They end up in the environment and they slowly break into microplastics, which are something smaller than five millimeters in size. Frankly, microplastics will eventually break down into nano plastics which are things that are smaller than one micron in size. Anything that is smaller than one hundred microns can actually make its way across your gastrointestinal tract, get carried through your blood supply, and end up lodged in various organs of your body like your liver, your kidney, or your brains. So the reality is that we use these products for minutes but they are made out of a material that lasts for centuries. That’s the problem.

Roger Coda

Ben: We know that microplastics have been found in some of the deepest parts of the ocean. How prevalent are they in the Great Lakes?

Mason: They are extremely prevalent here in the Great Lakes. In fact in parts of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, out where I live, we find concentrations that rival the most contaminated parts of the world's oceans. Lake Huron, sadly, it occurred to me on my drive up here that Lake Huron is now the least well studied of the five Great Lakes. We don’t have a lot of data, I think we have all of eight data points from all of Lake Huron. But the water that flows into Lake Erie flows from Lake Huron so you can imagine while certainly, people that live in and around Lake Erie are contributing plastic to the water that we end up finding, a lot is going to be flowing in from Lake Huron.

Ben: Plastic particles from your research have been found in tap water, they’ve been found in beer, can you talk about what your research findings show?

Mason: Our research findings basically are in line and add to the plethora of data coming from research groups across the globe that there is no environmental compartment of the world that has not been contaminated. It’s in our air, it’s in our water, it’s in our soil, it’s in our groundwater. You’re not safe. There’s no way to get away from it. The only way to solve this problem is to focus at the start of the problem and the start of the problem is our addiction to plastic.

Ben: We have these stirring examples of ocean life that they cut open their bellies and it’s just full of plastic particles. What do we know about the health impacts on animals and people when it’s this lower level, low-grade plastic pollution in our bodies?

Roger Coda

Mason: That’s a really good question because from a scientific standpoint those macroplastic items that you can see in many ways are less of a concern than these microplastics because these microplastics can transmit chemicals into your body, be stored within your body, and the full extent of that honestly we don’t know. Within the Great Lakes, I can tell you we tested 25 species of fish and every single one had plastic in it. We know that this is in our food, our study looking at tap water, sea salt, beer, and bottled water plastic was in all of it. An interesting study out of the U.K. earlier this year showing that it’s in out feces, human feces has plastic in it. So we know it’s making its way in the food chain. We know the chemicals in and on plastic have very well known human health impacts. These impacts are everywhere from increases in autism, increases in certain types of cancer, increases in obesity, to effeminization of men: lower sperm counts and smaller penal size. These things are happening. We don’t know, the piece that we’re working on right now in the scientific community is understanding how much of the chemical that make their way how much is coming from the plastic as opposed to other possible means. That’s where we’re at right now, we don’t really have the answer because science is slow sadly, it just takes time. I think what is really the important take-home message though and any researcher in the field will tell you is we have enough data to start acting. We know enough to know that the outcome is not benign and it’s not inconsequential. We really need to rethink our relationship with this material.

Ben: Thank you so much for letting me take so much of your time this morning.

Mason: My pleasure, I love talking about this.