As England brings in pricing on plastic carrier bags, and Scotland reveals that similar changes a little over a year ago have reduced the use of such bags by 80%, new research led by Heriot-Watt University in conjunction with Plymouth University will look at the effect which even the most microscopic plastic particles can have on the marine environment.<\/p>\n
While images of large \u2018islands\u2019 of plastic rubbish or of large marine animals killed or injured by the effects of such discards have brought home some of the obvious negative effects of plastics in the marine environment, it is known that there is more discarded plastic out there than we can account for, and much of it will have degraded into small or even microscopic particles.<\/p>\n
It is the effect of these latter, known as nano-plastics, which will be studied under a \u00a31.1m\u00a0research project, largely funded by NERC and run by Heriot-Watt and Plymouth Universities.<\/p>\n
The project, RealRiskNano, will look at the risks these tiny plastic particles pose to the food web including filter-feeding organisms like mussels, clams and sediment dwelling organisms. It will focus on providing information to improve environmental risk assessment for nanoplastics, based on real-world exposure scenarios\u00a0replicated in the laboratory.<\/p>\n
Team leader Dr Theodore Henry, Associate Professor of Toxicology at Heriot-Watt\u2019s School of Life Sciences, said that the study will build on previous research on nano-material toxicology, but will provide information which the earlier studies did not include.<\/p>\n
\u201cPieces of plastic of all sizes have been found in even the most remote marine environments. It\u2019s relatively easy to see some of the results: turtles killed by easting plastic bags which they take for\u00a0jelly fish, or large marine mammals drowned when caught in discarded ropes and netting.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when plastics fragment into microscopic particles, what then? It\u2019s easy to imagine that they simply disappear, but we know that nano-particles pose their own distinct threats purely because of their size. They\u2019re small enough to be transported throughout the environment with unknown effects on organisms including toxicity and interference with processes of the digestive system.<\/p>\n
An important component of the project, to be investigated by Dr Tony Gutierrez at Heriot-Watt, will be the study of interactions between microorganisms and the nanoplastics to reveal how these interactions affect their fate and toxicology.<\/p>\n
The aim, said Dr Henry, is to provide the information which is needed to effect real change.\u201cWe simply don\u2019t know what effects these nano-plastic particles may pose to the marine environment, to filter-feeders and on to fish, and through the RealRiskNano project we aim to provide this urgently needed information to the people whose job it is to assess risk to the marine ecosystem and decide what steps need to be taken to mitigate it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Source: Heriot-Watt University. See press release<\/p>\n
Image Source: \u00a9 User Hoshana, Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new project dubbed \u201cRealRiskNano\u201d, jointly conducted by Heriot-Watt and Plymouth Universities, will examine the effects and risks of nano-scale plastic particles on marine food webs. Micro- and even nano-scale particles are formed upon the degradation of plastic particles, which reach the oceans \u2013 either directly or by entrainment in rivers \u2013 in huge quantities. The project will also integrate know-how from nanotoxicological studies into this highly topical environmental issue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":10922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nanotechnologie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17363,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10924\/revisions\/17363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innovationsgesellschaft.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}