I have been doing lots of research on the topic of micro plastics this past week and the few prior, and it seems like there is some misunderstanding going on, myself included. I originally misunderstood the micro beads and micro plastics for the same thing and it seems like I was/am not the only one. I have read a few articles that I found on the web and the authors as well as some of the people commenting and asking questions of the authors were using the two terms (micro beads and micro plastics) interchangeably, though they are very different. I continue to refer back to Dr. Maya McGuires website for information and clarification though I have found some other resources that I have been using such as this article Plastic Pollution that goes into a lot of depth in explaining the differences between types of plastics as well as detailing the different sizes as well which I believe will be indispensable to me moving forward.
Dr. Woodall suggested to me this past week that instead of collecting my own samples and analyzing them that I work with Mallory at the Marine Discovery Center and volunteer to analyze their volunteer collected samples, which I thought was a wonderful idea. Their samples have been collected from a variety of sampling locations, although they do have specific requirements that must be met such as collected during a slack tide on a particular day and at a certain time, however as mentioned by Dr. Woodall I will be able to have a much larger sampling area available to me which I would expect to increase the accuracy of my data.
I am looking forward to learning from Mallory and am hoping to begin my studies with her this coming week and possibly a few days during spring break if it is possible.
Resources:
Reisser, J., Ryan, P. G., Galgani, F., Borerro, J. C., Moore, C. J.,
Thiel, M., . . . Eriksen, M. (2014, December 10). Plastic Pollution in
the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over
250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea. Retrieved March 03, 2016, from
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
Lilli--about the difference between micro plastics and beads--while not all beads are plastic, I believe it would be correct to say that if they are plastic--they are part of the micro-plastic 'family'. Angela--please correct/elaborate if you will. If we are to be specific--should we also use the term micro fiber in addition to micro bead? Put together--are they not both micro-plastics? I do agree--we must be clear and consistent in our use of these terms!
ReplyDeleteI think I may have caused some confusion back when I thought she was only looking for plastic microbeads, and I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to confuse the wax beads in beauty products for plastic.
DeleteI can agree that microbeads are part of the microplastic soup of debris, but one of my issues includes many articles that complain about microplastics, yet, ONLY address microbeads and show pictures ONLY of beauty products that contain these beads (or vice versa, complain about microbeads and show pictures of broken down plastic fragments). Microplastic is much more than beads. In her original post she specifically wrote about microplastics in hygiene products, thus I commented on differentiating since I originally assumed she was only looking for microbeads (the specific type of plastic in these products).
Since then, she has written additional posts that clarify she is not specifically only looking for the plastic in hygiene products (microbeads), so the term microplastic is acceptable when researching a wider scope.
Until her post I had never heard/read of microfibers (per chance the books/articles I read just refer to those as microplastic and do not specify?), but I found this highly interesting and look forward to reading about her findings. Just like microbeads, I would thinks these microfibers can be grouped under "microplastic". Since I don't know anything about microfibers, using a marine animal analogy, I can look at it two ways:
#1: Lilli is researching "marine animals"(microplastic) and microbeads are "sea turtles", microfibers are "sea birds", and plastic items that broke down into tiny fragments are "marine mammals"
#2: Lilli is researching "marine animals" (microplastic) and microbeads are "sea turtles", plastic items that broke down into tiny fragments are "marine mammals", and microfibers are "dolphins" that fall under "marine mammals".
Are microfibers genuine plastic (like microbeads and resin pellets), or exist due to something else breaking down in the water? Either way, it would still fall under microplastic.