"theme song" 0:00
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 0:05
Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes, a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice. As people are smarter and harder working than I am, to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton with illinoisa Sea Grant, and I know a lot about cavernous echo, layers and layers of echo, like sheet ice on a glacier. But I don't know a lot about the Great Lakes, and that's the point of this year's show. And we're joined today by special guest the lake lover, Megan Gunn, what's up? Megan,

Megan Gunn 0:31
things are up. It's also very cold. I guess the temperature is not up. So no, the temperature, in fact, this is

Stuart Carlton 0:37
ridiculous. I know that talking about the weather on podcast is most cliche, stupid things. I won't belabor it. Other than to say this, my favorite thing to do is to count the number of days in West Lafayette in which the high is below 30 and it's usually less than 10. And I like to point that out about how we're climate changing our way into, like, four decent seasons this year. That is not

Megan Gunn 0:57
no, it's been very cold every day for the last two months, two

Unknown Speaker 1:01
months below 30,

Stuart Carlton 1:02
too many. Um, yeah, we're ready for this. We got a thing coming up, and I want it to be outside. I don't want it to be inside, yeah, at this bar where the band is playing. Oh, that'll be nice. It will, but we've laid inside right for Christmas, and it was loud. Say, Christmas, yeah, it was loud, and it's fine. But outside is anyway, outside is that I wouldn't be labored, and the reason I'm not going to labor it is because we got some all stars here today. So the ijc, who we've talked to before, it's just released a really important report on a really important issue, micro micro plastics. In fact, if you go back to literally the first episode, whereby, I mean literally the second, No, literally, the first episode of teaching about about nurdles, about nurdles with Sarah Zack. So we've been talking about teaching about the Great Lakes for five Nope. We've been talking about micro plastics for five years, but we're not done. But you know why? Because plastics last for freaking ever. So let's just jump right to it.

Speaker 1 2:02
You researcher feature, a feature in which a researcher gonna teach us about the great place.

Stuart Carlton 2:16
Today, we're lucky to be joined by not one, but two researchers and a handful of others. First, I'd like to introduce Dr Rebecca Rooney. She is in the Department of Biology the University of Waterloo up in Canada. She's also the Canadian co chair on the ijc science advisory boards research Coordination Committee. That's a mouthful, but thank you for being on the show today.

Speaker 2 2:39
Thanks, Stuart, Hi, Megan, hi. We're also

Stuart Carlton 2:42
happy to be joined today by Eden Hadley. Eden is a doctoral candidate in Environmental Science at the University of Toronto, home of home, and was a restaurant with the really the Pink Guy chicken. It doesn't matter in Toronto, lovely Toronto. Eden, welcome. Thank you for having me. We're also joined by Rachel Wyatt. Rachel Wyatt, who's the international drink Commission's Great Lakes Regional Office Communications Officer, she helped to facilitate this dialog. Rachel, how are things are where are you? Anyway?

Speaker 3 3:12
I am joining you from the sunny, tropical location of Guelph, Ontario, where I am currently buried beneath a couple feet or meters of snow, depending on where you're listening from. Look

Megan Gunn 3:25
at that, I would like meters of snow right now, like we just have dustings, maybe a meter.

Stuart Carlton 3:31
We need a bunch of and we're also speaking actually for the first time in my life, but long time friend of the show, because he contacted me right when we started, and gave me just this huge list of topics we still pull from periodically. Allison Vogelsong zanatti, who's a public affairs specialist in the Great Lakes regional office of the International Joint Commission. Are you also in Guelph?

Speaker 4 3:52
Hello, bonjour. I'm in Metro Detroit. Our Great Lakes regional office is a bi national office in Windsor. So I like to say that I go to South Detroit for work, South Detroit being Windsor, Ontario. Of course,

Stuart Carlton 4:06
that's right, you go south. I knew that too. You go south to get to Windsor.

Megan Gunn 4:11
I didn't know. You didn't, did you know? I mean, I kind of paid attention to the map when we were going for the conference last year, but I wasn't driving. So, yeah, I just, I just wrote, and wherever we landed is where we landed. There we

Stuart Carlton 4:24
go. That's a good anyway, we're here to talk micro plastics, which, as we said earlier, says literally day one. But I think it's always worth reviewing. So Rebecca, give us the big picture. Actually, give us the small picture here. What exactly are micro plastics and why are they a concern in the Great Lakes,

Speaker 2 4:40
yeah. So we actually, in our report, proposed a standardized definition for microplastics, because different people have defined at least the lower cutoff in size for microplastics different ways. And so we're suggesting microplastics are polymeric substances, human made substances. That are anywhere from five millimeters in size, which would be about the end of a eraser on a pencil, to one micron, which is tiny, you know, less than a 10th the width of a human hair. So a bit of a range there. And microplastics come from different sources. We have microplastics that are produced. So you said you talked about nurdles. Nurdles are like an industrial product, right? That are produced as microplastics to be used in manufacturing. But a lot of our microplastics come from other plastics breaking down. And so they break down into smaller and smaller fragments, until eventually they're in this microplastic size range, and they come in different shapes and sizes. So we have a lot of microplastics in the Great Lakes. Are fibers, and a lot of that comes from, you know, our laundry when we wash our synthetic clothes. But there are also tire wear particles that come from driving wash off our roads, and there's lots of fragments of plastic which come from all kinds of litter breaking down, or construction materials, foam, even used in construction, will break down to release microplastics. So lots of different sources, different shapes, different sizes. I

Stuart Carlton 6:15
saw that in the report the tire dust. I thought tires were made out of rubber is what is even I'm not a material scientist, is rubber plastic or, I mean, they're not going to the tap the rubber farmers in Acre and tapping the trees. So I guess our tires made of plastic now they

Speaker 2 6:30
are, yeah, and as that as you get wear on your tire, you know when you see that groove getting shallow and you've got to replace those tires? Well, that plastic went somewhere.

Megan Gunn 6:40
It's gotta go, yeah, that is true. So I'm probably gonna talk about this later, like the removal of micro plastics. But is it possible to just scoop it all up and then use them as nurdles to make new products? Or there's so much that we gotta use them somehow, right?

Speaker 2 6:58
Yeah? Why don't I pass that one to Eden? Yeah, I

Speaker 5 7:02
would say not really. Which is, the issue with microplastics is remediation is really, really, really difficult, given how small these things are. So it's really important to prevent the emission of microplastics to the environment. Because ultimately, a lot of the stuff that gets into the environment is there for the foreseeable future. So remediation, there are people looking into remediation around the world, but on a large scale, I don't know if it's a viable option. So preventing that stuff getting into the environment from the jump is really the name of the game?

Stuart Carlton 7:42
Yeah, I want to get into more of that late later, but for a second, I want to talk the big picture. So, Rebecca, you mentioned that one of the things that you, you chose to do, wanted to do, was to standardize, standardize the definition. First of all, why isn't that been why is that important, and why hasn't it been done to date. How does one standardize the definition? I guess,

Speaker 2 8:03
yeah. So when, if you want to standardize a definition, I guess we propose one, and then we ask people to adopt it. And so in our report, we've proposed a definition that comes into alignment, not just, you know, if this definition is kind of adopted across the Great Lakes, but it brings our definition into alignment with work that's going on in California and work that's going on in Chesapeake Bay. So we actually worked quite closely alongside other teams who are addressing microplastic pollution in other jurisdictions to promote not just this sort of binational standardization, but standardization and harmonization of methods across North America.

Stuart Carlton 8:43
So when I harmonization, I think like Boys to Men, what is it standardization and harmonization?

Speaker 2 8:50
So harmonization is about bringing everybody's practices into alignment. And I would say standardization is sort of proposing a rigid definition and sticking to that. So we may all be monitoring using different monitoring programs, but if our monitoring is harmonized, then the data are going to be able to be interpreted kind of apples to apples. And if we all adopt a standard monitoring program, then we would all be doing exactly the same thing,

Megan Gunn 9:20
similar to what we do in the fish world with ibis and indexes of biotic integrity.

Speaker 2 9:26
I have, I have created indices of biotic integrity, and that's a great example, yeah. So that would be like a standard that everybody could apply. But if you were harmonizing your monitoring, say, of the fish in a particular wetland or area of the lake with another program that was working in a different region, then at least you'd be able to compare population trends.

Stuart Carlton 9:50
Okay, so important work to standardize. So we're so before there's or there's a danger that people aren't even talking about the same thing, right? And so you have some size class. But my. Or plastics, or plastics can get smaller than that, obviously. How do you how do you pick the sizes for sorry, nobody cares about this, but me. But how do you pick the like? How do you decide, all right, this is our cutoff. Is it just, hey, here's a nice round number. We got to cut it off somewhere. Or is it based on some sort of reality?

Speaker 2 10:16
Well, you raise a really good point. I'm going to, I'm going to, I don't know, I'm going to pass this to Eden, but one of the big questions everyone has right is, how much microplastic is there in the Great Lakes? And one of the reasons it's hard to have an answer to that is because of differences in monitoring practice. So Eden, do you want to talk about

Speaker 5 10:34
that a little bit? Yeah. So I mean, I think I don't know the answer to your question of why these upper and lower bounds were chosen as a common way to define microplastics as Rebecca was talking about, I think it may be connected to methods and the methods that are used to monitor microplastics, and because microplastics are A size based contaminant, different methods can capture different sizes. So one method that's been commonly used in the Great Lakes is using nets that are towed from boats to capture and isolate microplastics from the water column. And these nets may have different different Oh, like mesh, yeah, different nets may have different mesh sizes. It's very common to have a net with a mesh size of 300 microns, which means that anything that's smaller than 300 microns is going through your net. So you're actually not capturing that. You're not isolating it in your sample. You're not counting it towards your concentration, but that can that can differ. And then, as a complement to nets, another type of method that's used to sample micro plastic is pumps. Now pumps can go a lot smaller than 300 microns, because they don't have that mesh net component to them. And so when you're trying to compare a sample collected with nets to a sample collected with pumps, you're comparing apples to oranges because they've captured different size ranges of microplastics. And we've come to learn that microplastics typically increase in concentration as you look at smaller sizes. So if your sample is collecting smaller size micro plastics, you're probably going to have a higher concentration. So you can't really compare that way. So that's why this size portion of this definition is so important, because you can't really compare between those two samples, you know. So you can't say this area of the lake has a higher concentration than this area of the lake, which means the species that reside there might be at greater risk because you're capturing different size ranges. So

Stuart Carlton 12:51
you gotta get people talking the same language, so you even so you're talking, not talking across each other. That makes a ton of sense. And I guess the reason the concentration increases is because as you break up big bits, they turn into many smaller bits, like we're recording this on, what month is this, February 21 and right now there's sort of a little bit of alarm, low grade alarm, but existing alarm about this meteorite that might crash into Earth and blow up an entire city in the year 2038, or something like that. And so one of the things we might do is blow up the meteorite, and if so, then we'll have lots of little meteorites. Instead of just one big one, but the little ones will hopefully do less damage. Is that? Is that why they're more that's a tortured analogy. Is that why they're more smaller micro plastics than larger ones?

Speaker 2 13:34
I think I would say, if you were to take a plate and you shattered it right, the smaller fragments, the more the fragments, and so the more we include those small pieces in our measurement of the concentration of microplastics in a liter of water, the higher the count of microplastics in that liter of water will be. But there's also biological reasons why the size matters as well. So if you're thinking about organisms that are consuming that plastic like one of the main ways that we understand microplastics to negatively affect aquatic organisms is through them consuming it. And when it gets into their guts, you know, it fills up their stomachs and they they eat less because there's just not as much space for them to get food in. So they have sort of a nutritional deficiency from consuming the plastic and then plastic full but not getting nourished. I guess exactly you're just, it's like eating a bunch of junk food. You're just eating a bunch of plastic and then below a certain size fraction, which I think is 53 microns. There's evidence as well that those can pass from the gut into the body. It's

Unknown Speaker 14:47
83 do you want to

Speaker 2 14:50
see? It's 83 Yeah. Thank you. Eden, yeah. So below 83 microns, it can pass into the actual tissues of, say, a fish that's can. Assumed a particle, and that we call tissue translocation, and that has additional effects like oxidative stress. It causes inflammation, and so it can harm the animal in a different way than just that nutritional limitation of filling up the guts. So the difference between those two effects is really size based. So size matters a lot.

Megan Gunn 15:25
Allison, what is the ijc say about size?

Speaker 4 15:29
Well, what debeca And Eden are talking about are included in the ijc Science Advisory Board research Coordination Committees report. So that's that's consistent with the findings. I just wanted to note that, you know, the report and what their research on their study did is looked at the microplastics, so not just that floating in the water, but also in the sediment, so the dirt right, the muck at the bottom, that's where a lot of organisms live, and also, you know, forage for food, and there are significant amounts of microplastics found there. There's not as many studies that we looked at that we're measuring the microplastics in that sediment, right in the mud that squishes between your toes and then additionally in those organisms, right? So you've seen the pictures of the birds with their stomachs just full of pen caps, right? So we were in this research looking in terms of the aquatic environment, at fish, but also at most, teeny, tiny little critters, right, the phytoplankton and the microorganisms as well. And so that's the scale at which they can consume and be affected by microplastics and the water in the sediment, and then also, then in these organisms. And that's that's why the range is from the like Rebecca said the end of a pencil eraser, all the way down to what was a third of the size of your hair. That's because it's that wide range of organisms that are consuming it and where it is in the sediment in the and the water.

Stuart Carlton 16:58
As I get older, that third of the size of my hair gets smaller.

Speaker 2 17:02
It's the 10th of a size of a hair. But I'll let it go this very close a

Stuart Carlton 17:09
lot about the prevalence of micro plastics. And last time we did sort of a research round up on this, you know, the take home. This might have been way back in episode one. The take home was that we know they're everywhere. We're not real sure what they do yet, but you're describing a lot of physiological potential, potential physiological distress on fish and other animals, birds and wildlife. Eden, has there been much research? Are we still can we draw conclusions yet about the negative effects of micro plastics? Do we have any science based conclusions on that? Because my understanding was that it was still early days last time we talked about

Speaker 5 17:46
it, no, absolutely. There's plenty of studies now published in the literature that show that micro plastics can cause harm to lots of different types of species, lots of different types of impact on growth, reproduction, survival, things that happen at lower levels of biological organization, like at the gene expression level. So yes, the evidence exists. I think where we're at now is we don't quite fully understand. What about the microplastics is causing these effects. So we know size is important. You know the physical nature of the particle is important, but there's also the chemical nature of the particle. So the chemical microplastics are, of course, made of polymers, and then they contain all of these different chemical additives. So they have both this physicality and this chemical nature, both which, of course, have the potential to cause harm. We know a lot of the chemicals that are used as chemical additives and plastics are toxic, so I think that's where we're at now is really trying to narrow in on what exactly about these micro plastics is causing this harm, which is an extremely difficult question to answer, because microplastics are incredibly diverse in their physical nature, their size. We already talked about how they can range from five microns down to or five millimeters, sorry, down to one micron, they they constitute a whole bunch of different shapes. They constitute a whole bunch of different colors. And then on the chemicals of things, there's many different types of polymers, 1000s of different types of chemical additives that are intentionally added to microplastics. And then in the environment, they can pick up and accumulate other environmental contaminants. So it's a very complex question to try to answer, what exactly about the microplastic is causing the harm? And in our work with the ijc, we focused and narrowed in on as Rebecca was describing the physical elements. Harm. So this food dilution or filling the gut, and this tissue translocation, or moving from the gut into other tissues, so those are the elements that we focused on. We didn't really start to dive into this chemical side of the issue.

Megan Gunn 20:14
Where does your research fit into all of the micro plastic world?

Speaker 5 20:18
So a lot of my work is really, actually focused on this risk assessment framework that considers this size based impact of harm. So in terms of risk assessment, which was, you know, one of the three parts of the work that our the ijc work group did, the framework we're adapting and applying to the Great Lakes is very novel. It's, you know, this is really, I think, kind of the cusp of this type of work. So cutting edge, the cutting edge, yeah, it really is the cutting edge of this type of work. So there isn't a framework like it that considers, you know, the chemical nature of harm for microplastics yet. So a lot of my work is really focused on this physical harm based risk assessment framework that the ijc has used in in their work as part of this work group.

Megan Gunn 21:09
I like that. You said yet. I mean, this is a lot that's happened in the last five years since we first talked about nurdles and microplastics. So maybe in a couple years, Oh,

Speaker 5 21:18
absolutely, yeah, the field is advancing rapidly, and we're learning more and more and more every year. I think if you probably would talk to researchers who you know have done this since the start of the field, maybe 10 or 20 years ago, they would just be like, Wow, yes, we've really, really made big advancements. So no doubt, I think we'll continue to move forward and understand things better and

Speaker 2 21:40
better. To give a little context like one of the outputs of our IGC science advisory board work group was to help update a database on all the published eco toxicology papers that have come out. And there are now over 300 papers that are synthesized in this database called tomex. It's now tomex 2.0 and that's what Ian's talking about. We use to do this risk assessment. So when we say there's a lot of work that's been done, we're talking 300 published studies that we helped integrate into this risk assessment for the Great Lakes awesome and

Stuart Carlton 22:20
so geo risk assessment, you have thresholds, right different thresholds. How does the concentration of micro plastics currently compare to those thresholds?

Speaker 5 22:29
So we, I personally don't like to focus too hard on the actual values of the thresholds, because the beauty of this framework is it's iterative. So as more and more data comes out, maybe that data is more fit for purpose, for use and risk assessment. We can add it into the framework. We can bolster what we're building, and then re derive these threshold values, and they might be more robust because they're built off better data. So I would say our derivation of thresholds is preliminary, because a lot of the data that currently exists isn't fully fit for purpose, for use in risk assessment. So I think that's an important point to note, is that, you know, this is meant to be iterative. What we have now really offers us maybe a preliminary risk assessment, but there's two parts to risk assessment. So there's these thresholds, but you also need monitoring data, so reported concentrations of microplastics in the Great Lakes to actually compare to these thresholds. So I said, you know, there's still room for improvement on the data that underpins the thresholds, and there's also still room for improvement on the monitoring data. So we talked a little bit about harmonization of methods, a lot of the data that exists for microplastics in the Great Lakes is has not been collected using harmonized methods. So it's it's apples to oranges comparisons, and plus, not all of the lakes have been sampled even close to extensively. So I think on the lower end, maybe like, it might be Lake Huron. I believe we only have 12 data points for Lake Huron. So, you know, it's hard to say with any sort of confidence that Lake Huron sits here or here here on a risk assessment. You know, things look good, things look bad. You know, right now, it's really preliminary, but what I can say from a preliminary risk assessment, we do see data points in lakes Ontario and Michigan that cross that upper threshold value the other three great lakes here on superior and Erie, the majority of the data points sit below the lower threshold. So we derive two thresholds. The lower threshold is representative of concentrations of microplastics at which 5% of species in the community would be negatively impacted, while the upper threshold is representative of concentrations of microplastics at which 30% of species would be impacted. So again, you know that HC 30 value, we see some samples. From lakes Ontario and Michigan exceed that value. But for that HC five value, we see Huron superior and Erie all kind of remain below that threshold. But again, preliminary on both ends of the equation, and

Speaker 2 25:15
we should sort of say, I was going to jump in and say, and we should sort of paint the picture of the framework, which is based on trying to match the state of the Great Lake reporting that's already taking place, so that would assess the condition in the lakes into one of three bins, either good, fair or poor, depending on whether you're below the low threshold, in between the thresholds or above the upper threshold,

Speaker 4 25:45
yeah. And if I could just jump in, you know, as the public affairs person, I get the emails, Oh, I like this report. Thank you for this, right? Or people. And some of the feedback we've gotten is we don't need more studies to tell us microplastics are bad. And I think it's important, there's certainly no studies saying micro plastics are good for the air to clarify that. That you know, the research question at the heart of the i, j, c, Great Lakes Science Advisory Boards report is not how bad are micro plastics, it's to understand the state of the science. Do we have enough information about where micro plastics are, how many are in each of the Great Lakes, in order to know and inform our actions and decisions, what can we do to make the situation better and and make the Great Lakes more fishable, drinkable, swimmable, right? And so what the report did is it looked at, okay, well, here's all this research we have, and the research is very project based. It's very one off. It's not systematic, like Rebecca was saying. And so the conclusions of the report are that we need to have systematic monitoring that's using, you know, using standards, right? Using standard operating procedures that can be harmonized, so that Canadian researchers and US researchers can can put the numbers together and say aha, and what that AHA is that's missing that we need from that monitoring is, how bad is it, right? So like Eden was saying, art when it comes to the lakes, once we have enough data points, are we exceeding the threshold of 5% is it fair? Is it bad, right? And that gives us a picture of the now and then over time, as we do that regularly, it'll give us a sense of, are things getting better or are things getting worse? So regardless, there under the Great Lakes Water Quality agreement, you know, one of the principles is precaution. We shouldn't let a lack of scientific uncertainty about if micro plastics are, you know, how bad are they prevent us from taking action to prevent the environmental degradation that we know is occurring from, you know, this pollution entering the lakes. So ultimately, we have a framework that we could then implement and monitor and say, Okay, let's get a sense of where we're at no now, not just from these one off, you know, studies, but systematically. And then we can know Are things getting better or worse? And then we can also make plans for how do we reduce plastics from entering an environment the first place? And then the monitoring data will allow us to say, are our plans effective or not? So this is really a long range like strategy that the board is trying to put together and predicate all of this information on. So there's a lot of information out there, but we need even more to be able to act with certainty and make plans that can actually move the needle on micro plastics in the Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 28:27
I hear you there, Allison, it reminds me, well, it's so reductive to say, you know, micro plastics are bad. That's not the point of the studies, but you know that that's a conclusion that comes from them, but, but it's really a lot more than that. And so I hear a few things in what you're saying that really resonate with broader themes on the show. The first thing is, is that a lot of academic work is always going to be project based, because that's the incentives, right? You go and you get a grant, you do a project, and then you go and you get another grant, because A, that's what you're interested in. B, you're also interested in remaining employed. And so that is the way that it is. And that's just a theme of academia. And then related to that, though, is this is where long term monitoring programs are worth their weight in gold, and those are often government programs, right? And we're in an era right now, very much in particular, where people are questioning the value of government programs, long term government environmental science programs, and I am not going to get into a discussion of that as a publicly funded person, but I think that it's worth remembering that if that work doesn't get done by government monitoring programs, then it's not going to get done.

Speaker 2 29:35
I think one of the recommendations, one of the recommendations from our report, is actually to consider listing microplastics as a contaminant of mutual concern under the Great Lakes Water Quality agreement, which you know would require some reporting and monitoring. And also we recommended that it be considered for inclusion as a sub indicator under. Toxic chemical sub indicator for the state of the Great Lakes reporting, and that would also kind of feed in well to that, you know, government run large scale, consistent year to year, long term monitoring, which we need to be able to assess trends. So yeah. And to Allison's point about, you know, precautionary, I think we should always be precautionary, but because microplastics don't go anywhere, they kind of just break down into smaller and smaller pieces, we need to be extra precautionary, because we don't have remediation strategies that have proven really effective once the plastics are out in the environment. We've kind of, you know, lost our ability to really reel them back in. So if anything, I think, you know, in our literature review, it's really confirmed how much we need to be precautionary when it comes to microplastics. And

Stuart Carlton 30:47
what's great about that, that is, or the other thing I think that is worth remembering is, and what's really nice about this framework that you're developing, and as Eden's point that it's, you know, preliminary, but this is a long term deal microplastics. I mean, all honesty, frankly, at my age, this is more a problem for my kids and grandkids that like we're beginning to work there, because they're not going away in the next however many years. I have left, 95 to 120 years, but, but, and regardless it's there's going to be trade offs. We're going to be talking about trade offs. And that's why I think this framework is so important because it sort of systematizes this idea of trade offs. You know, as a society, we're going to have to make trade offs, because we're not going to eliminate plastic. We're not going to develop micro plastic free plastics that go into wide use anytime soon, and we're not going to develop removal systems that are perfect anytime soon. And so we're going to be making trade offs, and the only way to do that is with your eyes open and to do it in a way that's systematic, and do it in a way that you're speaking a common language, or, as you didn't put it, comparing apples to apples, or knowing that one is an apple, one is an orange, and having a fruit based conversation. But so let's talk about these recommendations. Let's go to the trends that you move this over there. So there's a number of recommendations, and this is an ijc thing, right? Is that they make recommendations. They don't really have the power to do the actions, but they can suggest that other people do it. Is that right? Is that a proper understanding of the i j C's role here?

Speaker 2 32:18
Allison will correct me if I'm wrong, but I would say that's a pretty good summary. Yeah, we are an objective, sort of third voice, and so we can make recommendations to the parties, and we can assess their progress towards their own commitments. But yeah, it's not, it's not our within our wheelhouse to sort of implement our own recommendations

Megan Gunn 32:40
and our I will say our listeners are regular people that can implement different practices to limit the amount of micro plastics that are going into the water. And I also, selfishly, I'm going to tomorrow the Chicago River Congress, which is hosted by the Friends of the Chicago River, is hosting an event for people to come learn all kinds of different things that are related to keeping the river clean and keeping like Michigan clean, but we're going to be talking about micro plastics at our booth, and so outside of telling the kids like, okay, don't try to limit the amount that you're washing polyester or limit the amount of bottles, plastic bottles that you're buying, what other recommendations can we tell regular people that they can do in their everyday to help better this in the future. Yeah,

Speaker 2 33:26
Eden, do you want to take this about the retrofit on washing machines?

Speaker 5 33:31
Yeah? Yeah, that's a really good one. So in our literature review, we looked at the shapes. I mentioned how microplastics have the shape component. We looked at the shapes that are most commonly found in the Great Lakes, and the number one shape across all of the different environmental matrices we looked at so water, sediment, biota and on the shoreline. It might have been different for the shoreline, but it was definitely for biota, sediment and water, the most common shape was microfibers. And microfibers are commonly shed from the clothing that we wear when we wash them, and of course, that washing machine effluent is sent straight to the wastewater treatment plant. And when the wastewater is treated, a lot of the fibers do get pulled out, but because the sheer number of fibers going to the wastewater treatment plant is so large, there's still a significant number that get released in wastewater treatment plant effluent to the Great Lakes. So a lot of washing machines don't contain, you know, a microfiber filter, kind of similar to the lint filters you get in your dryer, but they don't, kind of have similar counterparts in washing machines. So folks can actually purchase filters that they can. There's a whole bunch of different brands available on the market. They can purchase filters and install them on their own washing machines at home. So that's a really good way that people in their own house can start to make a difference in their own I guess, emissions of micro plastics, of course, you know, that's, you know, one thing that people. Can do. But I will mention there are countries around the world that are trying to actually regulate that companies that make washing machines actually start to put in filters at the stage of manufacturing. So I think France was the first country in the world that actually passed regulation, and theirs, I believe, is current, as of January 2025 manufacturers who sell washing machines in France have to have a filter built in, which is, of course, the ultimate goal, right? Isn't that people have to purchase something to put on their on their washing machine after it's been manufactured, but that they actually built into the manufacturing process. The NDP here in Ontario, I know you guys are down in the US, but one of the political parties here in the province where we live in Ontario, has tried to pass a bill two times Now to do this, but hasn't been successful. So there are things happening kind of in North America as well. They're kind of pushing for this type of regulation, but it's a good opportunity for people to make a difference right now when this kind of manufacturing filter thing doesn't exist yet. And then another

Speaker 2 36:06
one is just common sense, like, Don't litter and pick up litter. So when you think of a plastic bottle that you see, you know, on the side of the road, when that plastic bottle breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments, it can produce millions of microplastics, and so picking it up when it's still a bottle is a lot more efficient than trying to sift through the sand on your beach and pick out microplastics. So preventing litter and controlling losses from landfills when you put your recycling out on a recycling day, making sure that doesn't blow away, those can actually make a big impact as well. And then another thing is just a lot of our microplastics come from industrial sources, so having really good controls on making sure that we're not spilling nurdles or losing microplastic pellets at industrial locations is also important.

Stuart Carlton 37:05
We have an idea, and I want to get into the official big recommendations too, right to make sure we get those out there. But we're talking about the individual actions that people can take. Do we have an idea of the relative How much does like individuals? How much do individuals contribute to, like, the microplastic problem, compared to like, big corporations or tires or whatever, you know, like, so if I'm really careful, and I go and buy a filter or whatever, and everybody that like, is that going to make a dent? Or is it, it doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but, but I'm just curious, or is it like, no, until we get really upstream with the companies, it's not going to make a difference. But, you know, every every step helps

Speaker 2 37:44
for microfibers, washing machines are the biggest source. So if we all put these aftermarket filters on our washing machines, that would make a big dent, for sure. Yeah, I'll add like

Speaker 5 37:53
there's actually been some numbers put on that. So there was a study that was led by a PhD student in my lab a couple years ago. Her name is Lisa ertle, and she installed these filters at 10% of the homes in a community north of Toronto called Parry Sound, and then monitored before and after the levels of microfibers they saw at the wastewater treatment plant, and they saw a 10% decrease at the wastewater treatment plant. So 10% of homes in the community led to a 10% decrease of what was actually going to the wastewater treatment plant. And of course, that trickles down to what's released into the local aquatic environment. So for washing machine filters, there's actually numbers to show that individual action could could make meaningful results for other types of sources, you know, there's so many types of sources of microplastics. So that question is, could be hard, because you could parse out where individual action may be beneficial versus where you need something, you know, at a higher level. So the answer might be, it depends. But for microfibers and washing machine filters, we have numbers to say, Yeah, certain

Stuart Carlton 38:59
types anyway, where we know it's a big difference. Yeah,

Speaker 2 39:02
those would be the low hanging fruit, I'd say. But I think, like, you know, from our report, the main, the main recommendations that we're making are, you know, focused on, like, transmitting those recommendations to the parties, so they're recommendations for government, and the first and foremost is just to have regionally coordinated monitoring across the Great Lakes like that's a big gap that we really need to address. There are some research gaps that we need to address as well. For example, just better understanding the effects of microplastics when it's in the sediment, and having more research done on sediment based exposures, because so many important biota in the Great Lakes actually live along the bottom of the Great Lakes, not up in the water column. And I think another key is just having more studies on Great Lakes relevant species. A lot of the published studies are done using these kind of classic test. To organisms, zebra fish and, you know, African toads, which are species that we're not finding in the Great Lakes. They might be analogous to species in the Great Lakes, but it would be great to have more on, like some of our native mussels, for example, to have a better ability to refine those thresholds, like Eden talked about in the risk assessment. So those, those are some main re some of the major, I think, research gaps, and then to sort of feed into that listing microplastics as a chemical of mutual concern and as a toxic sub indicator. Um, under the state, state of the Great Lakes, reporting would really help kind of consolidate some of that monitoring effort and really get at that region wide understanding of what are the trends and what is the state of microplastic pollution.

Megan Gunn 40:50
Yeah, this has all been, go ahead. Allison, yeah, I was

Speaker 4 40:54
just going to say I think Rebecca makes a good point that, you know, Eden's example was with local impact and measuring. But it was monitoring that enabled the data. Enabled us to know was the intervention successful. And so without that systematic monitoring, it's difficult to know if, if every single person in the you know if everyone's washing dish dishwashing people, we're online, we start over laundry. Difficult to know if everyone's laundry machine were regulated and mandated, and all of a sudden, boom, we all have micro plastics. If we're not monitoring and regularly reporting, we won't know that cumulative impact, because we won't have a baseline against which we can compare to know if the direction of micro plastics are decreasing or increasing based on that, we can't, can't really evaluate the effectiveness of that. And Stuart, your earlier point, this is this report is not the first time the IGC has been paying attention to the issue of microplastics. And the commission, capital C commission, right? Not just the science advisory board, but the commission, issued some recommendations back in 2017 and they didn't just look at the state of the science at that time. They did say, hey, we need to monitor this. And that action hadn't been implemented by governments, right? Because these are non binding. These are just science based advising recommendations to governments. So in 2017 we made these similar recommendations, and the Commission also, you know, recognized that this is a plastic industry problem source problem. It requires a plastic industry source solution. And so the IGC actually recommended that governments promote life cycle responsibility for producers. There's this, you know, catch freeze of extended producer responsibility. If you make it, it's your job to make sure it doesn't get stuck out in the environment, and that it's captured in some way. And so the ijc has promoted through this 2017 report, and then, similarly, in a big assessment report that we do back, we do those every three years. That was also recommendation to governments. So it's been several times that the International Joint Commission has said that this requires, you know, regulatory or large scale targeting industry solution. In addition to, I think at this point, there's no such thing as a bad solution to micro plastics. We really need, like, all you know, collective action, all of the above, reduction of micro plastics to tackle the scale of the

Megan Gunn 43:22
of the issue. Well, this has all been fantastic, and you all are doing amazing work. And I wish you luck, Eden, as you continue, probably defending your thesis soon and just being done with school. But this is not the reason we all we brought you all here on, teach me about the Great Lakes we brought you and teach me about the Great Lakes. To ask you two questions. Our first question is, if you could choose between a donut for breakfast or a sandwich for lunch, which would it be and why? I'm gonna

Stuart Carlton 43:56
hand that one off to someone that they will all jump in at once. So we're gonna run the circle of power again, and we're going to start off, it looks like Allison, you're going to be first. Allison

Speaker 4 44:06
sandwich for lunch. All the way baby donuts are overrated.

Stuart Carlton 44:15
We go to South Detroit and want a delicious sandwich for lunch. Where are we going

Speaker 4 44:20
to go? Oh, in in South Detroit, Windsor asked me, in a couple weeks after I returned to the office, I don't know, it's still open post COVID. Alright,

Stuart Carlton 44:35
Rachel, so this is gonna be your big contribution, so don't blow it.

Speaker 3 44:41
Oh, my God, so much pressure. I just wanted to add it at, you know, the IGC was created by the Boundary Waters Treaty to act as an independent advisor to the United States and Canada. And part of that function is, you know, we assist the. Canada and the US through the Great Lakes Water Quality agreement. So we work cooperatively to help restore, protect and enhance the water quality of the Great Lakes. And part of that role under the agreement includes providing advice to the governments on different research and science and water quality matters, and that's where sort of our power to provide recommendations to the government comes from. Okay, so as you guys could tell from my big reaction to Allison's statement that donuts are overrated, I would take a donut for breakfast, and I'm sure this is going to be a hot conversation between Allison and I when we're back in the office together.

Stuart Carlton 45:48
So where should I go to get a donut? Then I want one of these donuts that are so good that it's worth giving up a sandwich for.

Speaker 3 45:55
I am a bit of a donut connoisseur. I will share that instead of a wedding cake. My husband and I actually had donuts at our wedding. And if you are, you know, traveling around the Great Lakes basin and you find yourself in Hamilton, Ontario, I recommend that you go check out a little place near Hamilton harbor called granddad's donuts. Granddad's

Unknown Speaker 46:19
they sound classic. They are. You

Stuart Carlton 46:22
was So was your wedding donut from granddad's or

Speaker 3 46:26
no, my wedding donuts were from a place in Guelph called Lady glaze. We got costume.

Unknown Speaker 46:33
Got you in Waterloo too? Lady glaze,

Unknown Speaker 46:36
yeah, we actually, I'm not

Stuart Carlton 46:40
even joking, have an intern who tracks all of these and I'm going to release a map someday. But instead, right now, it's just sitting on my hard drive, unreleased. What? Alright, you didn't have your Toronto, right? So are you a donut or a sandwich? Person?

Speaker 5 46:57
I'm going team Rachel. I'm going donut. I'm really into donuts right now, and honestly, I don't care where it comes from. I just, like, a lemon filled donut, okay, so, like, I'll take anywhere as long as it's a lemon curd filled donut with, like, icing sugar on the outside. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 47:16
gotta have that. It's all sugar.

Stuart Carlton 47:19
I know the reason why, here's why. It's because for lunch, every day you go to Queen Mother, is the restaurant in Toronto with the chicken that is so unbelievably good. I live in West off yet now it's we're at. I alert a couple years ago, West off yet didn't have a single good restaurant like it just doesn't. And so we're in Toronto, and, you know, there's an exchange rate that was quite favorable at that point. And so, man, I was going to every decent restaurant in that city, and there were a lot. There were a lot, but the Pink Guy chicken was my favorite. There

Speaker 5 47:47
are a lot of unbelievable restaurants in Toronto. It's problematic living here as a grad student, that's that's a day to day challenge

Stuart Carlton 47:57
at the money you save on beer, because the beer is terrible, you can spend on

Unknown Speaker 48:02
restaurants, throwing down the gauntlet. Stuart

Stuart Carlton 48:07
opinions this too by Carolyn couldn't make it. She would come to Toronto or Canada's defense, but alas, she's not here, alright? Uh, Rebecca, yeah, hi, University of Waterloo. I'm not going to get a donut or a sandwich. I think

Speaker 2 48:19
if you come to Waterloo, you're going to want to go up to the st Jacobs farmers market and get one of their world famous apple fritters. And we have had debates about this. This is a, yeah, it is a regional delicacy. So we do have lady glaze. And I love a donut with, like, a whole butter tart, and it's basically like a Caesar, but a donut, but you can't get better than an apple fritter from st Jacobs. This

Stuart Carlton 48:48
has been unbelievable. We've had three out of four like sandwich overall. Team sandwich is the winner, like over the 110 episodes, or whatever it's been,

Unknown Speaker 48:56
because that is the correct answers.

Stuart Carlton 49:00
All right, the other thing we'd like to ask so the purpose of the show, other than to get to screw on with my friends for an hour every couple of weeks, is to try to help people appreciate the Great Lakes is like a scientific, ecological and cultural, just special place, which is what it is, right? And I didn't appreciate that till I moved here, but it really, really is. And so one way that we like to do that is we like to ask about special places in the Great Lakes. So we're going to take this briefly. Eden. Is there a place that you find to be really special that you'd like to share? Yeah,

Speaker 5 49:34
I grew up in Kingston, Ontario. So Kingston Ontario sits at, I guess, kind of the end of the Great Lakes. It it sits where Lake Ontario meets the St Lawrence River, and also where Lake Ontario meets the Rideau Canal that takes you up to our nation's capital, Ottawa. So it's kind of cool. You know, it's this meeting place of all these different water bodies, and so that's definitely my special place. I spent a lot of time. Swimming in the river, swimming in the lake when I grew up. So that's my favorite part of the Great Lakes.

Stuart Carlton 50:07
That's wonderful. Rachel, how about you? Is there a special place in the Great Lakes to

Speaker 3 50:11
you? Yes. So in the Lake Huron watershed, there is a tiny, I don't even know if it technically is considered a village. It's called magnetoon, Ontario, and my family has cottages on a lake there. And I am the I'm a member of the third generation going up to that lake like every summer, and then there are two other generations coming up behind me, so that's a very special spot in the basin for myself and the Wyatt Family at large.

Stuart Carlton 50:55
Oh, well, too late. Allison, how about you?

Speaker 4 50:59
All right, I won't gatekeep, but I'll just ask anyone visiting this place not to litter it with plastic pollution or other pollution. It is Sturgeon Bay Beach, just south of wilderness State Park in Michigan, on Lake Michigan. Sturgeon

Stuart Carlton 51:19
Bay Beach, earlier policed all these in our show notes, except for your private cottages, of course, Rachel, which you can find just look at your podcast player now. Or this is probably episode 108109, I don't know. Just go to the website. It's hard to keep them all straight at this point in the hammer position. Rebecca Rooney, what is a special place in the Great Lakes?

Speaker 2 51:39
I'm going to have to say the Long Point world Biosphere Reserve on the north shore of Lake Erie, where I do a lot of research in my day job, which is as a wetland ecologist. And so there it's, if you take the long point on its own, it's about 70% of the remaining intact coastal wetland on north on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. So it's a really special place with Canada's oldest Bird Observatory, and with just an enormous diversity of species at risk. So I love to go out there with my students and look at the plant community, look at the bugs, Look at the birds, and collect some data for science.

Stuart Carlton 52:28
Very nice. Well. Allisonati, the published public, excuse me, affair, specialist of the Great Lakes regional office of the International Joint Commission. Rachel Wyatt, who is the International Joint Commission, great lake regional office, communications officer, Eden Hadley, PhD candidate soon to be Doctor Eden Hadley, hopefully the University of Toronto and Doctor Rebecca Rooney at the University of Waterloo and the Canadian co chair on the ijc science advisory boards, research Coordination Committee. Thank you so much all of you for the great work that you do and for coming on the show to teach us all about the Great Lakes. Thank

Speaker 2 53:02
you for teaching people about the Great Lakes. We need more people to understand and support them. You're

Unknown Speaker 53:07
so friendly. Thank you. You

Stuart Carlton 53:28
all right, fascinating conversation, interesting people, important work,

Megan Gunn 53:32
fantastic work about a very tiny, tiny subject. It's a

Stuart Carlton 53:39
tiny problem. It is a tiny it's not actually a tiny problem. Tiny problem, oh yeah, a tiny problem with huge implications, which

Megan Gunn 53:47
huge, massive. Just even thinking about how they were saying, like, 30% of the species, and I'm guessing this one of just fish species, but species in Lake Michigan are impacted by microplastics. Sad,

Stuart Carlton 54:02
and sad, because you see it's a thing, right? Because it's like, well, you feel like our human problem should be just with humans, right? And it's like, when you see the there is something to that, seeing all the animals suffer as well, things

Speaker 6 54:15
that we've done, things that we've done, yeah,

Speaker 7 54:20
it's gross. You teach

Stuart Carlton 54:27
me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, we encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at i i sea grant period org and at ili and Sea Grant on Facebook, look for us on blue sky and other social media.

Megan Gunn 54:41
Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley, and teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by me, Megan Lake lover gun and Renee miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer and our super fun podcast. Our work is by Joel Davenport Riley Ramsey is taking care of business, and the show is edited. Scientist,

Stuart Carlton 55:02
if you have a question or comment about the show, send us an email. Teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com. Let's order from ijc. They send us an email, and they email hotline. Speaking of hotline, leave us a message. 765, 496, iisg, that's 4474, 4474 thanks for listening and keep grading those legs.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai