Contact: Dr. Heather Leslie heather.leslie@vu.nl
‘Microplastics’ is an emerging environmental contaminant consisting of particles of plastic that originate from a wide variety of sources. The materials in a microplastic particle can be one of the thousands of different plastic types on the market today. Some are fragments of larger plastic items that have broken into pieces; others are manufactured microbeads, granulates or plastic nanoparticles. Microplastics have been identified in the marine and freshwater environments, in biota, and in food for human consumption, such as honey.
Environment and Health (E&H) has taken a leading role in the study of microplastics in the Netherlands. E&H scientists lead and/or participate in projects at EU and international level as well. Some of the project activities are highlighted below.
- CleanSea EU FP7 project (2013-2015)
See also the Horizon 2020 website where CleanSea is highlighted: - Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP) WG40 Global assessment of microplastics in the marine environment.
- Review of Microplastics in Cosmetics (2014) []
- MICRO EU Interreg project (2012-2014)
- Microplastic survey of the Dutch environment: Novel data set of microplastics in North Sea sediments, treated wastewater effluents and marine biota (2013) []
- Microplastic litter in the Dutch marine environment - in collaboration with Deltares (2011) []
- Microplastic in honey (2014) contribution to Dutch tv program Keuringsdienst van Waarde.
- JPI Oceans microplastics activities.
- with Bahram Sadeghi in Dutch national daily newspaper De Volkskrant 24-09-2016 [in Dutch]
- European Stakeholder Conference Microplastics session 26-09-2017 Brussels.