An external filter, retrofitted to your washing machine, is an immediate way of stopping microfibres going down the drain. Guardian lifestyle piece You might not know it, but installing a washing machine filter might be one of the simplest defences against microplastics entering the ocean. Scientists estimate there are 14m tonnes of microplastic on the ocean floor, and a […]
Every year World Wetlands Day is celebrated on the 2 February to raise the profile of the value of wetlands in all their forms. In the run up to World Wetlands Day in 2023, the Global Water Forum is running several stories relating to wetlands. Here we focus on constructed wetlands. Constructed wetlands in urban […]
Microplastics in sewage: a toxic combination that is poisoning our land By George Monbiot Policy failure and lack of enforcement have left Britain’s waterways and farmland vulnerable to ‘forever chemicals’ We have recently woken up to a disgusting issue. Rather than investing properly in new sewage treatment works, water companies in the UK – since […]
A new study in the journal Chemosphere studies the effects of polystyrene beads on three freshwater species. The study expands the knowledge on the acute, chronic, and subchronic effects of MP polystyrene beads (PS-MP, size 1.0 µm) on three species of the freshwater chain. These species are the green alga Raphidocelis subcapitata, the rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus, the cladoceran crustacean Ceriodaphnia […]
New study estimates there is at least ten times more plastic in the Atlantic than previously thought Posted: 19 August 2020 NOC ‘The mass of ‘invisible’ microplastics found in the upper waters of the Atlantic Ocean is approximately 12–21 million tonnes, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications. Significantly, this figure is only for three […]
One way to remove microplastics from water is to encourage them to clump together into compounds that can be filtered – or, in the context of the 20-year-old Irish inventor Fionn Ferreira’s work, magnetized – out. Ferreira created a homemade ferrofluid – a magnetic mixture of oil and powdered rust – and successfully used it […]
Link to article On a hot summer day in Connecticut, it’s common to go to a beach-side restaurant, eat some fresh oysters and mussels, and enjoy the crashing of the waves against the sand. For a group of University of Connecticut faculty and a Florida Atlantic University professor, their plan is to skip the beach […]
Once in the marine environment, tracing microplastics back to their source presents many difficulties. The approach taken in this study by the University of Plymouth was to quantify both tyre particles and synthetic fibres as they enter the marine environment. Three points of entry were considered; release from treated wastewater effluent, direct release from storm […]