TAMPA, Fla. — It's no secret that things can get into our water that shouldn't be there.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), plastic waste makes up 80 percent of all marine pollution. They also estimate that by 2050, the amount of plastic waste in our waters will likely outweigh the fish in the sea.
And water quality experts say all of that plastic doesn't just sit there— some of it breaks down into what's called "microplastics," which aren't easy to see with the naked eye.
So to learn if those pollutants were in Tampa Bay area waterways, we gathered samples from Hillsborough Bay, the Hillsborough River, and Old Tampa Bay. We drove them down to a lab at the Water School at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) to find out.
FGCU water school student Savannah Reiners helped us process our samples by filtering the water onto several small collection pads.
Then, it was off to the microscope room for an analysis where over and over she spotted microplastics—many of them most likely from clothes.
"This is going to be from clothes, so that's a microplastic," said Reiner while analyzing one sample.
"Oh! There's two right there. The red one and then another fiber," said Reiner while analyzing another sample.
Her professor, Dr. Puspa Adhikari, studies microplastics.
He said most often they come from the everyday plastics that we use, which break down into smaller pieces and end up in our water.
And he said it's a problem that's much bigger than the Tampa Bay area.
"All the samples that we analyze here, that we have analyzed here from groundwater well to bays to river[s] to [the] gulf, all the samples we have microplastics," said Dr. Adhikari.
Professor Adhikari added that microplastics are also making their way into the food chain and eventually into our bodies—and the long-term effects of this are still being studied.
"The other thing is that microplastics, they are not only harmful by themselves, but they act as a vector for other contaminants," he said.
So what's the fix?
Well, according to Professor Adhikari, it's a little too late to try and reverse the damage that's already been done.
"Once they're already in the water body, getting them out of the water bodies is almost impossible, if not very very difficult," Dr. Adhikari said.
Instead, he said we can focus on not making the problem worse.
And a good way to start is by making lifestyle changes—like adjusting how often you do laundry to help cut down on those plastic fibers.
"Have a big load of laundry instead of doing laundry every time. Reusing clothes, that's what I do like if it doesn't stink I'll use [it] tomorrow, that kind of thing. That will minimize your laundry by half," said Dr. Adhikari.
But overall, he said it will come down to reducing our collective use of all plastics.
"It'll take some time but if we minimize using them now, in long run, who know 50 years, 100 years or [a] couple of hundred years, from now we'll be out of microplastic if we stop using it now," said Dr. Adhikari.
