Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Researchers at the University of B.C. have discovered a way to filter microplastics out of water using biodegradable forest byproducts such as bark and wood dust. Scientists at UBC’s BioProducts Institute found that if they added tannins—natural plant compounds found in unripe fruit and a popular additive in wine—to a layer of wood dust, they could filter out nearly all microplastic particles from water.
Two new sharks are popping up in Toronto's harbour — but it's garbage, not people, who should be afraid of heading into the water. PortsToronto has brought in two WasteShark aquadrones to add to its larger trash trapping program. "It's essentially a Roomba that operates on the surface of the water," said Jessica Pellerin, manager of media relations and public affairs for PortsToronto. "[It] cleans up microplastics, debris… things that we don't want on the surface of the water and then we're able to dispose of it properly afterward."
Taylor Kormann didn't know what to expect when she signed up to collect the goopy leftovers of her laundry cycles for a year as a part of a citizen science project for the Atlantic Coastal Action Program. "It was almost shocking to see what's coming out of the laundry," Kormann said. Kormann and 22 other Saint John residents spent 2022 collecting the wet lint from their washing machines to measure the microplastics their wash cycles were contributing to the city's water system.
On a beautiful and sunny Sunday in Kingston, Ont., with many people enjoying the sun, a group of local divers strapped on their gear and hit the water in the name of sustainability. At Gord Downie Pier the divers convened toting along their gear in preparation for a trash dive for Sustainable Kingston’s “Underwater Pitch-IN” event. It was the first such event organized by Sustainable Kingston, but the second dive at this location this summer.
Two watershed groups on P.E.I. are participating in a regional research project to determine the level of microplastics in Island waterways. Microplastics are tiny plastic particles — often invisible to the human eye — created as waste and plastic products break down. The Winter River-Tracadie Bay Watershed Association and the Bedeque Bay Environmental Management Association are collecting data to determine microplastic levels in their respective bays for the second summer.
The IISD Experimental Lake Area has received $11.7 million, over the next five years, from the Government of Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) Major Science Initiatives Fund. “This funding is essential to driving forward our research on threats to Canada’s precious fresh water—from microplastics to drugs in our water and much more,” said Richard Florizone, IISD’s President and CEO in a prepared release.
Microplastics were found in 83.3 percent of Lake Huron water samples collected by Coast Watchers in 2021. Coast Watchers is a program of the Lake Huron Coastal Centre (LHCC) and has been in operation since 2005, analzying water samples for microplastics since 2018. That first year they found microplastics in 95.7 percent of the samples collected. The trend is not generally going down, said Alyssa Bourassa, coastal stewardship technician at the Centre.
Peterborough Regional Science Fair winners experiment with vegetation sanitation, microplastics in Jackson Creek, green detergents and colour perception. Five Peterborough youth science enthusiasts are heading to the Canada-Wide Science Fair after winning for their projects at the Peterborough Regional Science Fair last week. The science fair was held virtually again due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The winners were revealed Wednesday in a ceremony held over Zoom.
Textiles are the largest known source of microplastic pollution in the world's oceans — making up around 35 percent of microfibres released into the waters. Every time you wash your clothes, tiny fibres are released into the waste water. These fibres then travel into lakes, oceans and marine organisms. And while most of it becomes fragmented from wastewater treatments, a large volume still escapes and the long term effects of that are still largely unknown.
The use of disposable face masks as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more microplastics in waterways, a recent study from Canadian researchers has found. Microplastics are tiny plastic particles that are less than 5 millimetres long and are created through the degradation of discarded plastic-containing products. These particles have been observed polluting various natural ecosystems, particularly aquatic environments.
As the people of Toronto flocked to the Lake Ontario waterfront to swim, paddle and generally escape pandemic isolation, Chelsea Rochman's students at the University of Toronto were throwing plastic bottles with GPS trackers into the water. The research team's goal is to track trash that ends up in the lake, to figure out where it accumulates in the water and where it's coming from in the first place. Using information from the tracking bottles, they chose spots to put in Seabins — stationary cleaning machines that suck in water all day and trap any garbage and debris — at marinas along the waterfront. They are emptied daily, and the debris collected in them is examined to ferret out what kinds of trash is getting into the lake.
It's the little bucket that could — a small contraption floating along the Ottawa River shoreline cleans the waterway one plastic wrapper at a time. "This is the first trash-trapping device in Ottawa and it gives us an opportunity to see what's happening in our water," said Melanie Abdelnour, a Grade 1 teacher with the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, who helped bring the Seabin to Ottawa.
A four-year research project looking into the impact of microplastics on freshwater ecosystems and on agricultural soils will have important implications for the Great Lakes, said its principal researcher. Funded by the Canadian government, the $1-million project was announced in May. It will measure microplastic levels in wastewater from treatment plants draining into Ontario rivers and streams that feed into the Great Lakes. Plants differ in their approach to treating wastewater, and so the team of university, government and private researchers hopes to better understand which treatments are best able to deal with microplastics.
The Government of Canada is further investing in research to better inform the protection of our oceans, lakes, rivers and waterways and the many species that call them home. The unfortunate reality is that microplastics and pharmaceuticals enter our water systems due to human activity. This means we must continue to study and understand the threats that our ecosystems face.
On the ISS, every drop of moisture, from humidity to urine, has to be filtered and reused. But the current system is very heavy, has to be replaced every 90 days, and fails to filter out certain contaminants, according to NASA. Danish company Aquaporin A/S has developed a new system that uses proteins called aquaporins. "It is essentially the mechanism that allows water to cross the cell membrane of living cells," says Peter Holme Jensen, CEO of Aquaporin A/S. In nature, these proteins allow plant roots to absorb water from soil, and let the two human kidneys together filter about 45 gallons of fluid per day. They are also very selective, preventing contaminants from passing through.
Amid the challenges of a global pandemic, an early-stage researcher at McGill University has been recognized for his innovative work to remove microplastics during water treatment, ensuring safe drinking water and helping to combat the growing environmental problem of microplastic accumulation in aquatic ecosystems, soils and surface waters. The breakthrough work has earned Mathieu Lapointe the Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation — Postdoctoral, awarded by Mitacs, a national innovation organization that fosters growth by solving business challenges with research solutions from academic institutions.
Microplastics may be contaminating our drinking water, according to a study published by researchers at the Geological Society of America. Their chemical threat stems largely from their ability to transport harmful compounds on their surfaces, meaning that when organisms at the base of the food chain ingest microplastics, they ingest toxins too. These toxins can build up and eventually result in responses like organ dysfunction, genetic mutation or even death. The researchers found bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used to make plastics, in all 47 human samples.
Two years ago, researchers collected microplastics from pristine surface waters at three nearshore locations in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, finding tiny and unrecognizable fragments, threads and fibres in every trawl. Chemical analysis has now identified the synthetic polymers that made up those miniscule pieces of plastic and confirmed what was expected: the microplastics were shed from easily recognized sources. "Fishing gear, fishing rope, fragments of nets and particles that would come from that kind of activity, that is a big source of microplastics," said Ariel Smith, the coastal and marine team lead for Coastal Action, the environmental group that is leading a three-year Atlantic Canadian microplastics research project.
In the first large-scale survey of its kind in the region, researchers sampled more than 30 locations across the eastern Arctic and Hudson Bay and were able to detect microplastics nearly everywhere they looked, including in surface waters, marine sediments and in the guts of zooplankton – the tiny, floating organisms that occupy the base of the Arctic food chain. And while the long-term effects of the materials on the environment and on human health remain largely unknown, the results suggest widespread exposure is becoming inescapable, even for people living in the most remote areas of the globe.
Microplastics contained in drinking water pose a “low” risk to human health at current levels, but more research is needed to reassure consumers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
Studies over the past year on plastic particles detected in tap and bottled water have sparked public concerns but the limited data appears reassuring, the U.N. agency said its first report on potential health risks associated with ingestion.
