By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews
Scientific studies have confirmed the ubiquitous presence of tiny particles of plastic up and down the ocean’s food chain in everything from tiny burrowing bay shrimp to massive gray whales.
Now, with the help of Yachats and three other coastal communities, researchers are continuing their quest not only to document the scope of the microplastics in the environment, but perhaps to solve it.
Key to that is a newly announced award of nearly $2 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Sea Grant Marine Debris Challenge Competition.
The money is financing a three-year effort led by Portland State University to create solutions to curb microplastics resulting from coastal tourism.
“Every time we do a study looking for microplastics, we end up finding them everywhere,” said Elise Granek, the PSU Environmental Sciences and Management professor who is heading the effort. “This grant not only gives us the chance to study the problem in much more depth, but lets us also really contribute to solutions.”
Project partners include the University of Washington, the Oregon departments of Fish and Wildlife and Environmental Quality, tribes, the cities of Yachats, Depoe Bay, Pacific City and Cannon Beach, Oregon Sea Grant, several non-governmental organizations and the Oregon Coast Visitors Association.
It’s one of 11 such efforts nationally, all funded with $27 million from Congress’ passage of an infrastructure act in 2022.
The Oregon piece of the marine debris challenge, totaling $1.97 million, is described this way: “Tourism is a significant and expanding factor in the economies of U.S. coastal areas, but it places pressure on the municipal infrastructure, including water, wastewater and waste systems. This project aims to address the main sources of microplastics from coastal tourism by developing washing machine, dishwasher and clothes dryer filters and creating cost-effective air filtration devices.
“Additionally, it seeks to measure the effectiveness of intervention strategies in addressing challenges faced by the hotel industry in removing microplastics.”
“It’s a big issue”
Since 2016, Granek’s lab has worked to understand the distribution of microplastics along the Oregon and Washington coasts. Studies have looked at, among other things, microplastics levels in shellfish, fish, crustaceans and whales.
In addition to the Pacific Ocean, Granek’s researchers have examined the Deschutes, Rogue, Willamette and Clackamas rivers. All turned up concerningly high levels of microplastics, which are plastic fragments and particles with diameters of less than 5 millimeters – or about one-fifth of an inch across.
The work has also revealed high levels of microplastics in wastewater. That’s concerning, Granek said, because traditional wastewater treatment methods do not remove those particles. As a result, the “biosolids” left over from treatment are then often trucked to farms in eastern or southern Oregon, where they are applied to fields.
“Taking the problem from one place and moving it someplace else as particles in fertilizer means microplastics can then be wind-blown someplace else,” said Susanne Brander, a project-team member and associate professor in OSU’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. “It’s a big issue.”
Many microplastics are particles that have broken down from larger plastic items and are a problem precisely because of the dangers they present to the organisms, animals and humans who inhale and absorb them, Granek said.
Microplastics have been shown to affect reproductive systems and also cause abrasions and inflammation in the gut.
In humans, microplastics have been found in lung and cardiac tissue, blood, the placenta and in human waste.
“We don’t have conclusive evidence yet on the effects on overall human health,” she said. “But if one extrapolates, we can hypothesize that it’s likely that ingesting or inhaling microplastics may have a negative impact on human health.”
How it’s going to work
The new project is an outgrowth of work that was drawn up more than three years ago, which involved the same four coastal towns now expected to be part of the new effort.
That earlier project installed filters in storm and wastewater drains, as well as in the dishwashers and washing machines of volunteering households.
One result showed that upwards of 90 percent of the microplastics from polyester fabrics that broke down during the laundry cycle were captured before they entered municipal wastewater systems.
What’s significantly different about the work ahead, Brander said, is that it will involve not individual households, but the busy, industrial-scale laundries of coastal hotels and, to a lesser extent, restaurants.
“A business, obviously, does a magnitude more than just a household,” Brander added. “There’s much more bang for the buck.”
Drew Roslund, managing partner of the Overleaf and Fireside motels in Yachats, wrote a letter in support of the research that could, potentially, lead to his businesses being fitted with microplastics-capturing filters.
“I’m fascinated to learn whether we are dumping a bunch of microplastics into the environment,” he said. “And, if we are, we want to know how we can reduce that.”
The on-the-ground data collection likely won’t begin until late this year, Granek said, due to the lengthy delays that often accompany federal funding. Regardless of the start date, she said she’s eager to get going with a project that could, potentially provide the science to underpin legislation requiring new washing machines to have microplastics-capturing filters.
“What we don’t doubt,” she added, “is that we’ll get some interesting and useful results.”
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
I appreciate the hard work toward solutions, but I didn’t see anything here about solutions to car tires shedding microplastics, which is also tourism-related. A study called “Breaking the Plastic Wave” that looked at four key sources of microplastics (including textile microfibres, personal care products, plastic pellets and tire dust–using the British spelling, ‘tyre’) stated: “The largest contributor to 2016 microplastic leakage into the ocean is tyre dust.” Obviously more people using fewer vehicles is a solution, for example, public bus transit. Will Portland State University and project partners include mass transit in tourist destinations as a solution to microplastics pollution, and if not, why not?