On a clear morning, the water at Lake Michigan’s southern shore appears almost unbelievably blue. Kayakers glide by while families wade in the shallows. People have an innate sense of trust in the Great Lakes because of their vastness, cleanliness, and age. It’s getting more difficult to defend that impression.
According to new data, researchers studying the five lakes have discovered microplastic concentrations that are higher than any measurements ever made. According to research published by Great Lakes Now, nearly 90% of water samples taken over the previous ten years exceed safe exposure thresholds for wildlife. These studies are not on the periphery. Peer-reviewed studies, environmental monitoring programs, and volunteer cleanup data all consistently show this pattern, and the numbers keep rising.
The Rochester Institute of Technology estimates that the Great Lakes receive over 22 million pounds of plastic each year. Plastic doesn’t go away once it gets into the water. It breaks. It turns into microplastics, which are particles smaller than five millimeters, and then it just keeps degrading. Along the way, it absorbs chemical pollutants, embeds itself in fish tissue, floats into municipal water intakes, and eventually appears in the tap water of about 40 million people in the area. Additionally, it has been discovered in bottled water, fish from the Great Lakes, and—possibly an unusually depressing detail for anyone who likes a cold beverage after a long day—beer.
The majority of people who live close to the lakes may not have realized how much of an impact this has had. In the strictest sense, the crisis is invisible. Microplastics are invisible. They are odorless. The water doesn’t appear any different. However, plastic levels in some freshwater lakes in North America may now surpass concentrations found in ocean environments, according to recent studies, and researchers testing samples from all five lakes have discovered them in startlingly high concentrations. Given the amount of attention ocean plastic pollution has received, this suggests something worth pausing over.
The part that should probably worry people more than it does now is what happens to the plastic once it’s in the water. Aquatic organisms eat microplastics, which then ascend the food chain. They serve as tiny, slow-release delivery systems for pollutants they weren’t initially carrying by drawing and concentrating other hazardous substances once they are in the water. Fish consumption, drinking water (both tap and bottled), and even the air can expose humans to microplastic particles. According to recent research, these particles can travel through the Earth’s atmosphere and land in locations far from any obvious source. It is estimated that the average person consumes about one credit card’s worth of plastic per week. It’s odd to notice that figure has been in circulation so frequently that it now seems almost routine.
As University of Bristol researchers pointed out, the bigger issue is that better waste management is unlikely to be the only solution. For generations to come, the plastic that is already in the environment will continue to break apart. Better filtration at water treatment facilities, biodegradable material substitutes, product prohibitions, deposit-return systems, and increased access to public water refill stations to lessen dependency on single-use plastic bottles are some of the solutions being discussed. Environmental organizations like the Alliance for the Great Lakes vigorously pushed for legislation addressing plastic production, reuse systems, and data collection, which the Illinois legislature has passed. Similar policy battles have also taken place at the federal level.
The disparity between the scope of the situation and the response’s speed is difficult to ignore. The lakes are remarkable because they contain about 21% of the freshwater on Earth’s surface, and some of North America’s biggest cities rely on them for drinking water. Decades of accumulation have led to the concentrations being measured today, and the trend line is not bending in the proper direction. It is currently genuinely unclear if the policy momentum surrounding the Great Lakes will be sufficient to alter that trajectory. However, the window of opportunity to figure it out isn’t expanding.
