A new study led by a statewide environmental nonprofit organization found microplastics in each of 53 Pennsylvania waterways sampled, including four in Centre County.
The report “Microplastics in Pennsylvania,” released Wednesday by PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center found that samples taken from Spring Creek, Slab Cabin Run, Buffalo Run and Cedar Run all contained microplastics — tiny pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters in length.
More than 300 samples were collected from bodies of water in every corner of the state for the study, which used a citizen-science protocol developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that has been implemented across the country to identify microplastic contamination.
“The results of this study should set off alarms for all Pennsylvanians who love our states rivers and streams,” Faran Savitz, PennEnvironment conservation associate, said during a virtual press conference Wednesday morning. The staggering amount of microplastics we found likely means that no river, lake, or stream is safe from this increasingly common contaminant.”
Plastics don’t break down into biodegradable components. Instead they just become smaller and smaller pieces of plastic.
“It’s really concerning because microplastics not only contain chemicals that are harmful to our health and to the health of wildlife but they can concentrate toxins that are in the environment, acting as a vector for harmful chemicals,” Savitz said.
The study tested water for microplastic pollution from four sources: synthetic fibers, primarily from clothing and textiles, but also fishing line and bailing twine; fragments of harder plastic or plastic feedstock; film from plastic bags and food wrappers; and microbeads, which have been used in toiletries and cosmetic products but have been banned since 2018.
Fiber, fragment and film microplastics were found in each of the four Centre County streams.
Statewide fiber microplastics were found in 100% of sampled waters, films in 94%, and fragments in 87%. Microbeads were found in just one: the Delaware River Canal in Bucks County.
The study measured presence, but not prevalence.
“We went with presence because we felt the methods and standardization of sampling analysis wouldn’t yield an accurate comparison between the waterways in terms of amount,” Savitz said.
David Velinsky, vice president of Academy Science at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, said that more research needs to be done on the routes that microplastics may take into the food chain.
“Microplastics can potentially accumulate pollutants that are present in the environment at low, low levels, accumulating or building up these contaminants and delivering them to wildlife that eat or ingest these microplastics,” Velinsky, who provided technical consulting on the study, said.
Contaminants like DDT and PCBs are hydrophobic, meaning they tend to repel from water, and so they adhere to petroleum-based plastics in the waterway, Velinsky explained. Those microplastics can then be consumed by fish and some birds, moving the concentrated doses of the contaminants up the food chain.
“Once they ingest it it accumulates within the body tissue,” Velinsky explained. “If the tissue [concentration] gets high enough there could be some adverse effect to the organism. Most often the levels that we see cause a potential impact to those who are consuming the fish from the waterways. There are a lot of state advisories for DDT contamination, PCB contamination. That’s one route of getting these chemicals into the fish. They’ve also shown this is a route of getting these contaminants into seabirds and other organisms. It’s not 100 percent confirmed that it does have this route. Sometimes it’s shown, sometimes it’s not.
“This area is a fairly new area of study, an ongoing area of study, and the importance of this exposure route is not firmly established but it is in a number of studies shown to be important. It’s something we’ve got to keep our eye on as we move forward.”
Microplastics have been found virtually everywhere, from Mount Everest to ocean floors. A World Wildlife Fund-commissioned study suggested that through eating, drinking and breathing people ingest about 2,000 pieces of microplastic a week, equivalent to the weight of a credit card.
During a State College Borough Council meeting earlier this week, Councilwoman Katherine Yeaple asked State College Borough Water Authority Executive Director Brian Heiser if there were any concerns about microplastics in the drinking water supply.
“Fortunately for us because we are primarily groundwater and for the most part deep wells, the microplastics are not going to impact us,” Heiser said, also noting SCBWA does not test for microplastics. “In this area that does not seem to be a concern because of the fact that we have groundwater. Where that’s more of a concern is when it’s coming off of a surface source, like a river or lake type community. Even our small surface sources, it’s very high in the watershed so again it’s not an impact there because there isn’t any residences or any type of dwellings upstream of our small surface source.”
All four Centre County streams in the study are in the Spring Creek Watershed. Joanne Tosti-Vasey, Spring Creek Watershed Commission chair and Bellefonte borough councilwoman, said she was “not surprised” by the findings given other studies on microplastics nationally that she has seen.
She said the PennEnvironment study has been added as a discussion item for the commission’s March 17 meeting.
The PennEnvironment report makes several recommendations for reducing microplastic pollution: phasing out single-use plastics; eliminating the General Assembly’s preemption that prohibits municipalities from passing local plastic ordinances such as bag fees; passing producer responsibility laws, such as bottle deposit requirements; ending policies that promote increased manufacture of plastics; laws that prevent retailers from sending overstock and unsold clothing to landfills and incinerators; and developing green infrastructure that reduces stormwater runoff.
“There is no silver bullet solution for fully addressing the the mini-menace of microplastics,” Savitz said. “We need to fundamentally change the way that society produces and markets the products that consumers buy. We need to change the ways in which we deal with waste in order to tackle this form of pollution. And we need to make the creators of this environmental hazard start to take responsibility for the products they put in the marketplace.”
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon and state Rep. Tim Briggs, Democrats who represent parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, both assisted with the study and took part in Wednesday’s press conference.
Both said solutions require state and federal policy action.
At the federal level, that’s the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act, which Scanlon said she expects to be reintroduced in Congress soon. It would place requirements on producers for collecting and recycling certain products after use and would phase out some single-use products such as plastic utensils.
At the state level, Zero Waste PA is a package of Democrat-sponsored bills aimed at reducing environmental problems caused by disposables, including single-use plastics.
“The policies have to change,” Briggs said. “We need to not just deal with the litter, but we need to stop it at the source. We need to stop these attacks on our environment that are being sold as job creators, or as economic drivers. We need to be focusing on our commonwealth’s resources on innovative ways to create jobs and not rely on environmentally hazardous plastic manufacturing. It’s harmful at its creation and its harmful at the tail end.”
PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center will host a virtual webinar to further discuss their findings Sam Mason, a national expert on microplastics and sustainability coordinator at Penn State Behrend, at 6 p.m. on Thursday. Those interested in attending can RSVP here.
