Geoscience professor Nan Crystal Arens says the “many ways that microplastics might be harmful to humans” hasn’t been studied sufficiently — and she secured a $358,976 grant from the National Science Foundation to spend three years investigating the issue with a team of undergraduates in New York, according to the Finger Lakes Times .
What’s happening?
Concerns about microplastics , defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as plastic particles “less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a pencil eraser),” have been steadily increasing in recent years.
Those concerns exist in part because microplastics have been found virtually “everywhere,” often in areas rarely or barely touched by human activity, like Antarctica .
A pair of high school students recently identified ” a concerning level ” of microplastics in two remote lakes at Grand Teton National Park. Their findings were worrisome in part because the National Park Service does not routinely test for microplastic pollution.
Why is research into microplastics important?
The fact that microplastics have proliferated across land, sea, and air is one of two things often centered in reporting on the issue…