The Autonomous University of Barcelona has announced a new crowdfunding campaign to provide detailed information on the presence of microplastic pollution in cities.
Cities are the main source of more than 24 trillion microplastics floating on the surface of our oceans. Researchers from UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, and the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC), have launched the Plasticker Project in order to determine how cities contribute to microplastic pollution.
Through the support of the UAB Research Park, the team has developed a simple and economic sampling method to characterise and quantify microplastics present in cities.
How do cities contribute to plastic microparticles?
It is estimated that urban centres may accumulate more than 700 microparticles per square metre, per day.
However, due to a lack of concrete studies, scientists are unable to understand the presence of these pollutants in urban environments. There have been several issues regarding studies such as this, including practical difficulty, high economic cost of sampling, and identifying and quantifying these substances.
The new method involves a 100% biodegradable adhesive, which sticks to an urban surface such as a pavement, street furniture, or playground to collect the particles lying on them. By analysing these sample particles, it will be possible to determine how much microplastic pollution exists in cities.
“Although the main route for these pollutants to reach the marine environment are rivers, they find their origin in urban centres due to high-density anthropogenic activities”, explained Michaël Grelaud, a ICTA-UAB researcher.
These pollutants directly, or indirectly, release around 2.5kg of microplastics per year into the environment. They mainly come from tyre abrasion (50.5%), plastic on road surfaces (9.4%), plastic pellets (7.4%), transport and waste treatment (6.8%), and the abrasion of sports surfaces (5.3%). Other major contributors to plastic pollution include construction, shoe abrasion, plastic packaging, road paint, and the friction of textiles in washing machines.
How does constant exposure to pollution affect human health?
Constant exposure to this pollution can pose potential risks to our health. Andrea Vidal Durà, a soil technician at the ICGC, said: “Microplastics can interact with the human body through three main routes: inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact. Several studies have already shown that microplastics were able to cause serious impacts on human health, including physical stress and damage, inflammation, or immune responses.”
For researchers, knowing the origin and concentration of microplastic pollution in our daily spaces is essential to decide how to deal with a problem that directly affects the health of people and ecosystems.
Therefore, the development of the Plasticker methodology is a step forward in reducing such pollution, while also creating more sustainable spaces that are free of microplastics. “The aim is for cities to become spaces where we can touch, breathe, and eat without being exposed to this invisible pollution,” Grelaud concluded.
The crowdfunding campaign, ‘Plasticker: the urban microplastic tracker,’ aims to raise €10,000 for the development of the materials and methodology required to assess microplastic pollution in cities, as well as for the start of the sampling and subsequent analysis phase in the laboratory.
