BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – We’ve all seen plastic bottles floating along rivers and washing up on beaches, but what’s harder to notice are microplastics – which can pose the greatest risk of all.
On a bridge in Colchester, a small group of researchers lower a net into the Winooski River. What they’re searching for is almost too small to meet the eye.
“What we’re looking for is microplastics. To see what’s out there, what’s in these tributaries,” said Andrea Stumpf of the University of Vermont.
The net hits the water, and they start a timer. For the next ten minutes, all sorts of river debris will flow into a container attached to the end of the net.
Then, UVM professor and watershed researcher Anne Jefferson and her team will sort through in search of microplastics.
“We know we’re going to find them in almost every sample because we’re finding them pretty much every place scientists look, including in human bodies and on the top of Mount Everest,” said Jefferson.
Microplastics can be as big as a pencil eraser or as tiny as a grain of sand. They come from small bits of plastic or larger pieces that break down over time.
In waterways like Lake Champlain, microplastics can clog the stomachs of fish and other organisms, causing issues across the food chain.
“The goal with the samples is to really robustly quantify the types of microplastics and where they’re being found in the lake,” said Jefferson.
This summer, students and researchers from UVM and SUNY Plattsburgh are studying over a dozen rivers and beaches on their respective sides of the lake.
It’s the first comprehensive study of microplastics in the Lake Champlain basin.
“It’s really exciting to do something where we don’t know what the results might be. We’re gonna find something out that we don’t know yet,” said Stumpf.
Ten minutes up, they pull the net back up. They empty the container to reveal their findings: bits of wood, plant matter, and what they think is a piece of microplastic.
They’ll bring the sample back to the lab where they’ll sort out and identify types of microplastics. That can give them a better sense of where microplastics are getting into the watershed and how to prevent pollution in the first place.
“Maybe we need to be having conversations with particular businesses or groups within our community. It’s really helpful to have good data to have those conversations with and to identify the types of interventions when they’re needed,” said Jefferson.
The team will sample waterways over the next two years, identifying microplastic hotspots and how storm dynamics, flooding, and seasonality change their concentration.