LONG BEACH, Calif. — Admiring the beautiful view of the ocean, Shelly Moore looks beyond the surface, having trained her eyes to see the problems hidden below.
On her quick walk outside, she notices the glass and plastic bottles peeking from under the ocean along the Long Beach marina. It’s a reminder of the 11 million metric tons of plastic the California Ocean Protection Council estimates enter global oceans every year. Although as the executive director of the Moore Institue for Plastic Pollution, she said the effort to change that starts at home.
“I grew up here in Southern California and I’ve always loved the ocean and I really want to protect it, protect it from us,” Moore said.
That is exactly what she and her team at the Moore Institute for Plastic Pollution Research are doing, taking a rather microscopic view of the problem.
Andrea Amend is a lab technician helping find microplastics in water samples they receive from across the state and country.
“I want to see just the microplastics, and the sand is getting in the way, so I need to I can do something called a density separation,” Amend said.
By definition, microplastics are less than 5 millimeters in size, making them a tiny but mighty environmental challenge.
It is why chief scientist Gwen Lattin said it takes time to analyze each sample.
“So we know exactly what the components are of that particle and all the different sizes,” Lattin said.
Their work here has made them one of two initial labs to receive accreditation to test state drinking water for microplastics as part of a first in the nation initiative to standardize microplastic monitoring in drinking water.
Recent studies have found an entire spoon worth’s of microplastics in human brain samples and other levels have been found in organs like lungs and liver.
Although ecotoxicologist at the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, Scott Coffin, said it’s still too early to know exactly the risk they have on human health.
“Collectively we did observe that studies of rodents exposed to some types of microplastics through drinking water indicated potentially adverse effects on the reproductive system, as well as potentially other organs,” Coffin said.
He said they do not have enough evidence to indicate what that means for humans, but notes the focus on risk assessment especially in drinking water, is important.
“We typically see lower concentrations of microplastics in tap water than we do in bottled water. One of the main reasons for this is that plastic bottles tend to shed microplastics during bottling, as well as when we open and close the cap,” Coffin said.
He says microplastics are pretty much all around us, in our clothes, curtains and food, especially seafood, due to the ocean pollution.
Which is why at the lab finding the source of the microplastics is critical.
“They know what type of plastic it is and they might use it to find out, ‘oh, we know the toxicity of that in fish if you’re getting a sample from the ocean. Okay, there’s a lot of this.’ It’s this type of plastic which causes this type of toxicity,” Amend said.
Moore adds its just one step in collectively changing the plastic intrusion.
“The plastics are just so prevalent in our society. It’s hard to get away from that right now. But if we start small and start with individuals and work up to larger groups, I think we can we can make an impact,” said Moore. Admiring the beautiful view of the ocean, Shelly Moore looks beyond the surface, having trained her eyes to see the problems hidden below.