Microplastic Pollution and its Detection

Dr Katie Reilly, Research Fellow, University of Birmingham

Microplastics are a pervasive pollutant globally, and have been found in all environments studied to date. However, the available data for microplastic ingestion and interaction with organisms in the environment is varied and a lot of work has focused on larger animals such as marine mammals or birds to understand how these plastics could be having an effect. To further our understanding of individual and ecosystem level risks, laboratory exposures can be undertaken to understand how microplastics can be affecting key species, and how they are being impacted. Daphnia, or water fleas, are a great model species for this as they have historically been used to test other key pollutants such as chemicals to understand risk. In addition, they are a keystone species for freshwater ecosystems, and provide a key trophic link between algae and higher-level organism, such as fish. Exploring some of the current research at the University of Birmingham, we can use Daphnia to look at the environmental risk of plastics, and some of the ways that the field of research is developing and growing as we understand more of the underpinning principles of the problem.