Major
Environmental Science
Anticipated Graduation Year
2027
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
Plastic pollution is a pressing global concern. Plastic pre-production pellets, or “nurdles” are widespread in the environment, but not yet well documented in rivers. In particular, nurdles are well documented along coastlines; additional efforts are needed to report the presence and concentration of these pollutants in freshwater habitats to fully understand the scope of the problem. This project had 2 objectives: 1) use community science (i.e., volunteer-generated) data to quantify nurdle abundance in rivers at a continental scale, and 2) measure the magnitude of the distribution of nurdles in a single tributary of the Chicago River.
Faculty Mentors & Instructors
Timothy Hoellein, PhD, Department of Biology
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Investigating the Quantity & Composition of “Nurdles” at Micro & Macro Levels
Plastic pollution is a pressing global concern. Plastic pre-production pellets, or “nurdles” are widespread in the environment, but not yet well documented in rivers. In particular, nurdles are well documented along coastlines; additional efforts are needed to report the presence and concentration of these pollutants in freshwater habitats to fully understand the scope of the problem. This project had 2 objectives: 1) use community science (i.e., volunteer-generated) data to quantify nurdle abundance in rivers at a continental scale, and 2) measure the magnitude of the distribution of nurdles in a single tributary of the Chicago River.