Scientists want the U.S. and Canada to designate microplastics as a “chemical of mutual concern.”
The recommendation is part of a new report on how to monitor microplastics in the Great Lakes, released by the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board at the International Joint Commission, an organization that helps the U.S. and Canada tackle water quality issues together.
“The Great Lakes have a lot of microplastic. There’s absolutely no doubt,” said Chelsea Rochman, an assistant professor of ecology at the University of Toronto and an author of the report. “The amount of microplastics that I see in urban areas — for example, in Toronto — is striking. It is much higher than I see in the open ocean, or even in the ocean in urban areas. And the amount that we see in our fish, including in our sport fish, is also striking.”
The designation would add microplastics to a list of contaminants like PCBs and mercury that both countries are required to monitor under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
“We have a lot of policies on both sides of the border,” Rochman said. “But we can do better, specifically for microplastics.”
Microplastic particles can negatively impact aquatic organisms, ranging from stress on an organism’s diet to its reproductive system. Emerging research also shows that microplastics can leach toxic chemicals into organisms.
“We see hundreds of particles in the gut of an individual fish here in the Toronto Harbor … and we also see tens or dozens of particles in the muscle, which is the filet, the part that we eat,” Rochman said. “We also know that the concentrations we see in some parts of the Great Lakes are above those that we consider to be a threshold for risk, meaning that the organisms now in our Great Lakes are exposed to levels that could be harmful.”
But there’s currently no coordinated regional effort to monitor microplastics across the Great Lakes. That would change if microplastics are added to the binational list of contaminants.
The new report lays out a framework for making widespread monitoring possible, like a standardized definition of microplastics and standardized methods for sampling and reporting microplastic pollution.
Right now, most data comes from piecemeal research across different academic institutions.
“If we’re all sampling in the same way and doing the analysis in the same way … we can compare apples to apples, as opposed to trying to compare apples to oranges,” Rochman said. “If we’re monitoring in such a way that’s not standardized, it’s possible the data won’t have the same trust … as we make decisions that may change how businesses operate, how people operate, et cetera.”
The report provides the tools to run long-term, consistent microplastics monitoring programs as opposed to the disparate data that come from academia.
Officials from the U.S. and Canada first began considering adding microplastics to the list of “chemicals of mutual concern” in 2023. There’s no timeline for when they’ll make a decision.
Funding for much of the work of monitoring pollutants on the U.S. side of the border comes from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. That money is approved through 2026. An extension of that funding through 2031 has passed the U.S. Senate but still needs House approval.
On Feb. 12, the International Joint Commission Great Lakes Science Advisory Board will hold a public webinar to discuss their report on the state of science on microplastics. Register here.
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