Microplastics in Sewage Sludge Exploration and Detection (MISSED)

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The exponential rise in plastics manufacturing and usage has become a threatening and looming environmental contaminant. Nearly, 1.76 trillion microplastic (MP) particles enter wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) each year in Canada with <1% load removed, leading to negative environmental impact. Likewise, the weathered products of MPs (nanoplastics < 1 µm (NPs)) also escape to water sources with severe ecotoxicity impacts. Most of the past work on MPs has primarily focused on the ecosystem effects, ignoring the dynamics of WWTP. The proposed, "Microplastics in Sewage Sludge Exploration and Detection (MISSED) will develop reliable detection methods for selected MPs and its weathered products (WPs) in the WWTP. The project will study the mechanistic behaviour of these MPs in suspended and attached growth systems to develop risk assessment models. The proposed project team comprises national and international researchers with multidisciplinary expertise comprising chemistry, environmental, chemical, and mechanical engineering, biology, amongst others. The knowledge generated will be mobilized by different stakeholders, viz., municipalities, government organizations and not-for-profit organizations who are participants in the proposal. Significant numbers of highly qualified personnel (2 post-docs; 4 Ph. D.s and 10 undergraduates) will be trained. The study will address MP transport patterns and can help mobilize guidelines to increase the WWTP efficiency to eliminate MPs and mitigate the ecological impact.