A scientific method to identify microplastic hotspots — areas of the ocean floor covered with small pieces of plastic — has been tested in Long Island Sound waters.
Professor Claire Gwinnett from Staffordshire University in England worked with a team from The Rozalia Project for a Clean Ocean and Central Wyoming College to develop a system that tests open waters for microplastic hotspots.
The study proposed a universal scale to identify a hotspot previously, the term was not scientifically defined.
“Researchers use the word hotspot without defining what hotspot means,” Gwinnett said. “Everyone kind of understands what's going on; ‘hotspot’ means it's important. But without there actually being a definition, and in this case, the actual way to calculate it, so that it could be standardized.”
The method involved taking a liter of surface water every 3 miles, starting from the East River in the middle of the Sound.
The water was analyzed using a uniform standard deviation approach, so all of the results were compared on the same scale.
“We started out simple because we want something that can be easily understood and could be calculated without needing, like, a mathematics undergraduate degree,” Gwinnett said.
Gwinnett said the team tested the system in the Long Island Sound because it’s a busy transport area with a high wildlife and human population.
“Because there's lots of different types of activity going on, it makes it a really interesting sort of field site to understand where it's highest and where it's lowest,” Gwinnett said.
They found two hotspots off the coasts of Sands Point, Long Island, and New London, Connecticut.
“The two entry points onto the Long Island Sound, it kind of feels like that should make sense,” Gwinnett said. “Because in the sort of entry point, we're gonna get an accumulation, the hydrology of these waterways is such that at the mouths or the openings of these, you can get accumulated particulates.”
According to the National Capital Poison Center (Poison Control), microplastics are found in many filter-feeder seafoods, like oysters and mussels, and then consumed by humans.
“Microplastics have been found in human saliva, head hair, and feces, suggesting that we are all exposed to these plastic fragments on a regular basis,” according to Poison Control. “Some researchers believe that microplastics have detrimental effects on human health.”
But Gwinnett said the hotspots are not necessarily cause for panic.
“We haven't got to panic at this stage,” Gwinnett said. “But it should send up a flag that we need to do something about our exposure and not increase it. And what I mean by that is thinking about how we can reduce the amount of microplastics in the environment by simple activities that we personally as a public can do, even just by making choices, a bit more sustainable. One single plastic straw, that seems absolutely fine in one drink, that ends up in the ocean can make 1,000 microplastics.”
The system that Gwinnett and her team developed will be used next to develop a program that allows residents to track microplastics in their area.
“People will be able to actually even just take photos of samples that they've collected, and [the application] will go, ‘microplastics’ or ‘there's not microplastics there’ and hopefully that really gets people thinking about their own environment and maybe what they can do.”
