microplastics

Researchers have discovered microplastics across the bottom of the St. Lawrence River, the first time these pollutants have been found in freshwater sediment.Scientists from McGill University and the province of Quebec published their discovery this month in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.The microbeads they found usually come from personal care or cleaning products that wash down the drain and pass through sewage and treatment plants right into bodies of water.“We were surprised to find such concentrations at the bottom of a river,” McGill professor Anthony Ricciardi, who supervised the study, told the National Research Council. “It was previously assumed that floating microplastics are flushed through rivers to the sea. Now we have evidence that rivers can act as a sink for this pollution.”
While the environmental effects of microplastics are not well known, the surfaces of these plastics attract chemicals that can be transferred to animals that eat them.