UK rivers heavily contaminated with microplastics, study finds
13/03/2018
Microplastics that the study uncovered included microfibres as well as microbeads and plastic fragments.
The research, led by Professor Jamie Woodward, head of geography at the university, and his colleagues Rachel Hurley and James Rothwell, constitutes what the university has called the first detailed study anywhere in the world of a river catchment area.
For this, they studied plastics entering river systems close to Manchester from multiple sources, including industrial effluent, storm water drains and domestic wastewater. Specifically, they studied channel bed sediments at 40 sites across urban, suburban and rural river catchments in north-west England. “Microplastic contamination was pervasive on all river channel beds,” the study has said. However, when the team inspected the same sites again after flooding in 2015, they found that the microplastic contamination had reduced by around 70%. Flood waters had “efficiently flushed from river catchments”, carrying the contamination into the sea.
“Microplastics in the ocean have recently attracted a lot of attention, but until now science knew little about the major sources of this pollution and the transport processes involved,” said Professor Woodward. “We decided to explore the contamination of urban river beds, as we began to think that they may be the main source of the problem.”
He added that, to tackle the problem in the oceans, we have to prevent microplastics entering river channels.
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