Tiny fibres and fragments of plastic have been detected in the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, offering yet more evidence of the pervasive nature of plastic pollution.

In a study published Jan. 14 in the journal Facets, researchers from MacEwan University detailed the results of water sampling conducted at eight sites along a roughly 66-kilometre stretch of river during the summer of 2017. Microplastics were detected in all 22 water samples the team collected.

“It was not unexpected to find this level of microplastics in the river,” Matthew Ross, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry at MacEwan University and one of the study’s authors, told The Narwhal. “We’ve been able to find microplastics in pretty much anything scientists have looked at.”

Scientists have found microplastics near Everest’s peak and along the ocean floor, in oysters, Arctic belugas and even in the air. 

As the world struggles to tackle the problem of plastic pollution, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party government is banking on a growing plastics and petrochemical industry to help diversify Alberta’s economy.

While the province has committed to building Alberta into a world leader for plastics recycling, companies are planning manufacturing complexes that will pump out new plastic products as well, including a major new facility along the North Saskatchewan River. 

More research needed to fully understand microplastic risk

The levels of microplastics detected in the North Saskatchewan River were “low enough that [they’re] likely not causing a big risk to wildlife,” Ross said. 

He cautioned that his answer might change as concentrations of microplastics increase and as scientists gain a deeper understanding of the potential risks microplastics may pose.

“If we don’t mitigate this, presumably, we’ll see increasing concentrations,” he said.

While there are still unknowns about the full impact of microplastic pollution, these tiny particles may cause tearing or blockages in the digestive tracts of organisms that eat them, according to the Facets article.

“Microplastics may also act as a vector for the transport and release of organic contaminants, such as pesticides, plasticizers, flame retardants and additives to organisms once ingested,” the researchers note in the study.

While most microplastic research has so far focused on oceans, studies have found similar and, in some cases, greater levels of microplastic pollution in lakes and rivers, according to the Facets study. 

Study is first to measure microplastics in western Canadian river

In Canada, there have been only a handful of studies focused on microplastics in fresh water. This was the first to examine microplastic pollution in a river in western Canada as far as the authors are aware.

As the North Saskatchewan River winds its way east from the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains, it crosses an area known as Alberta’s industrial heartland, before moving into Saskatchewan and eventually Manitoba, where it empties into Lake Winnipeg.

Over the years, the waterway has faced increasing pressure from the energy industry with new pipeline crossings and spills.

The North Saskatchewan River traverses a large region stretching from Alberta, including the Kootenay Plains in Bighorn Wildlands Area shown here, to Manitoba. Photo: Darwin Wigget

In December, contaminated water spilled from a pipeline in the Drayton Valley into a creek before flowing into the river. Farther downstream, a major pipeline spill in 2016 forced a number of communities in Saskatchewan to stop drawing water from the river for two months. 

Edmonton, with a population nearing a million, is the largest city within the North Saskatchewan’s watershed.

Of the eight sampling sites, one was upstream of Edmonton, six were within city limits and one was downstream.

The authors said the microplastic concentrations detected in the North Saskatchewan were consistent with those found in other North American rivers, but cautioned direct comparisons are challenging due to differences in the way samples were collected and analyzed. 

Due to the size of the mesh the team used to collect their samples, the smallest microplastics they were able to detect in the North Saskatchewan River were 53 microns — about a third of the size of grain of sugar. Microplastics are typically defined as pieces smaller than five millimetres. 

Most of the microplastics detected in the river were human-made fibres, either polyester or cotton. Of the fragments they detected, most were identified as polyethylene or polypropylene.

Drinking water utility says microplastics not a safety concern

While the North Saskatchewan River is Edmonton’s sole drinking water source, EPCOR, the city’s drinking water provider, said the presence of microplastics in the river is not a concern for the utility’s ability to provide safe drinking water.

“Our water treatment plants are capable of screening out very small particles, like bacteria,” a spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The Narwhal, explaining that “generally microbeads [a type of microplastic] are larger than the bacteria we treat in the water every day.”

Ross said the smallest microplastics his team detected — about 0.053 millimetres in size — are close in size to the largest bacteria.

“Presumably, if they can filter out much smaller bacteria, they’ll also remove microplastics and other particulates in this size range,” he said.

While EPCOR does not and is not required to test for microplastics, the utility “closely monitors the research and new developments on this subject,” the statement said.

Stormwater drains likely flushing microplastics into river

The researchers sampled both upstream and downstream of a wastewater treatment plant outfall, but noted there was no uptick in microplastics immediately downstream of the plant. 

“It suggests to us that the sources are more diffuse,” Ross said.

Microplastics could be washed into the river through storm drains, or fibres that shed from clothes could be carried through the air, he explained.

Ross noted that his team has detected high concentrations of microplastics in samples collected from stormwater drains in Calgary as part of new research. They’re also starting to look at concentrations in stormwater retention ponds in the Edmonton area.

The North Saskatchewan River, which runs through Edmonton, is the city’s sole source of drinking water. However, the city’s drinking water provider said the presence of microplastics is not a concern. Photo: Kurt Mauschardt / Flickr

Biosolids collected from wastewater treatment plants and used as fertilizers could be another source of microplastics, the Facets paper notes.

Ultimately, Ross said, cutting down the amount of plastic we use is a key to stemming the flow of microplastic pollution.

“Some of this plastic is likely coming from the degradation of litter and then the eventual runoff of that into the river,” he said. “So simply reducing the amount of plastic that we’re using would hopefully help stem some of that source.”

Industry, researchers partner on new microplastics research on North Saskatchewan River

Microplastic research will continue along the North Saskatchewan River over the next few years. 

In addition to Ross’s work, a multi-year study is underway by researchers at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), supported by $10 million in funding from Inter Pipeline, an energy infrastructure company that’s building a new petrochemical complex along the North Saskatchewan River to manufacture polypropylene plastic.

The researchers are working to develop methods to identify and measure microplastics in both freshwater and river sediments. The researchers have already collected more than 140 water and sediment samples.

Federal government, Alberta at odds over path forward on plastics

The federal government has said it wants to cut plastic waste to zero by 2030 and has proposed a ban on certain single-use plastic items, including straws, stir sticks, cutlery and six-pack rings. 

The government has also proposed new requirements for recycled content in products and packaging, a measure aimed at extending the life of plastics, and new regulations are expected to be finalized by the end of this year.

In Alberta, meanwhile, Premier Kenney has said plastics are “a real ace in the hole for Alberta’s future.”

Kenney took issue with the federal government’s plans to label plastic items as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, calling the label “unscientific” and suggesting it would hurt Alberta’s economic recovery.

Alberta Minister of Energy Sonya Savage was also not impressed with the federal plan, saying “plastics are the foundation of the modern world.” 

Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada Jonathan Wilkinson has said the designation shouldn’t affect the province’s efforts to increase plastic recycling and has noted that every year “29,000 tonnes of plastic waste enters into and pollutes our natural environment.”

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John Noksana, Jr., learned the many skills of harvesting beluga whales in his teens. He’s spent the intervening decades perfecting them. 

“I can proudly say I can go capture a whale, butcher a whale — do everything from start to finish,” he says. Rendering the fat into oil, he says, is the most time-consuming. In bad weather it can take two weeks or more. 

It’s part of a set of practices passed down by Inuvialuit for millennia, just one of the many skills needed to thrive on the Arctic coast. 

The whale hunt is also a central social event. 

“The first few whales anyway — probably the first three, four, five whales — everybody knows,” he says. Once word gets out on Facebook, the whole community of 900 people will take a trip down to the dock to help themselves to a share of the catch. 

In a place where food prices are famously obscene, beluga meat provides a sustainable source of nutrition to the community. 

But lately, questions have been raised about the health of the belugas, from the presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to mercury.

Plastics found inside healthy individuals

A paper published this week in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin found yet another cause for concern: tiny fibres and fragments of plastics inside the stomachs and intestines of the Arctic whales. 

“We found microplastics in every individual that we sampled,” says Rhiannon Moore, the paper’s primary author.

Rhiannon Moore looks at fragments of plastic found in the gut of a beluga whale. Photo: Rhiannon Moore

Rhiannon Moore extracts the contents of a beluga intestine, in order to test it for microplastics. Photo: Rhiannon Moore

In partnership with hunters like Noksana from the community of Tuktoyaktuk, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the scientist from the Ocean Wise Conservation Association dug into seven whale stomachs and intestines. Three hundred and fifty bits of plastic in all were found inside the whales, most of which were less than two millimetres in size (about the thickness of a loonie). That small size suggests that the plastics may have come from prey eaten by the whales, or at least that they have travelled a long way. 

Unlike most studies of this type, in which samples come from whales that have washed up or been stranded, the whales were healthy adults who were harvested for food. 

“That means that it’s not necessarily biased toward animals that are sick or injured, or washing up because they’ve ingested plastic,” Moore says. 

There is no direct evidence so far that suggests this plastic is bad for the whales’ health — let alone the health of the hunters and community members who eat them. But “it might just be one on top of like 16 other changes this whale is experiencing,” explains Lisa Loseto, an author of the paper and scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada who has been working with the Inuvialuit to study the whales for decades. 

Loseto’s earlier work has focused on other toxic chemicals in the whales, but a direct transfer of chemicals through the whales and into humans may not be the only way the plastics can harm the people who rely on them.

“The wellbeing of our animals is everything,” Noksana says. 

Moore and colleagues aboard the Canada C3 expedition look over Arctic data they’ve collected. Photo: Rhiannon Moore

‘We’re trying to adapt’

All across the Arctic, a single stunning result has been repeated again and again: there is plastic everywhere. It’s in birds. It’s in shellfish. It’s in sea ice. Thousands of kilometres from the nearest city, there it is. 

Yet all the efforts to study the spread of plastic throughout the Arctic are happening in isolation.

“There’s no plan, there’s no coordination, there’s no monitoring framework,” explains Jennifer Provencher, a scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada. Provencher has been named to an Arctic Council panel creating a monitoring program to bring this research together and generate Arctic-wide data. 

Provencher’s own studies of seabirds involve the communities of the central Arctic. That work has shown that, like the belugas of the western Arctic, the vast majority of northern fulmars have plastic in their bodies. 

“There is no population of fulmars anywhere that we’ve looked at that has zero plastics,” she says.

Like the work Loseto and Moore have done in the western Arctic, Provencher’s work has depended on the communities nearby.

On that point, Noksana is particularly proud. About as long as he has been hunting whales, the community of Tuktoyaktuk has been working with researchers to understand them better — both through their own lens and that of the scientists. 

“The guy in the community has a PhD on the land,” he says. 

 And it’s their own questions that guide the research. 

“80 per cent of the studies that are done in our region, they come from the people,” he says. Years ago, overhunting and waste led to a strict self-imposed bylaw that forced hunters to harpoon whales before shooting them, preventing lost catches. Losses are now near zero, he says. 

The need to monitor the environment has taken on a darker timbre in recent years, however, as climate change has accelerated and begun manifesting in destructive ways for the coastal community.

Now he frets about establishing baselines before it’s too late.

“You have to know what you have in order to know what you’ve lost,” he says. 

Not that the belugas are yet lost. Far from it, in fact; the local population number was healthy at last count and a new count is on its way. The plastics may be alarming but the community is determined to seek further answers.

Noksana is optimistic. 

“We’re trying to adapt; we’ve always adapted,” he says. “We’re going to persevere.” 

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Plastic pollution in the oceans has become an important societal problem, as plastics are the most common and persistent pollutants in oceans and beaches worldwide.

In the common imagination, plastic waste is often associated with bottles drifting in the ocean, fishing gear washing up on beaches or plastic bags that turtles mistake for jellyfish and eat.

But those larger particles are just the tip of the iceberg.

Smaller particles are also an important part of the problem. Plastic particles smaller than five millimetres are called microplastics. They may originate from deliberate design (such as cleaning agents or personal care products), breakdown of larger pieces of plastic or microfibers from textiles.

The impact of microplastics on the environment and human health is still being studied.

Microplastic collection on the Oregon Coast. Photo: Laura / Flickr

Arctic impact

If people assume the Arctic environment is unaffected by what humans discard into the oceans, they are wrong. The pristine waters of the Arctic Ocean are under silent threat by those particles as they drift along with the ocean currents over long distances.

Microplastic concentrations in the Arctic are expected to increase rapidly due to increasing freshwater input and the intensification of shipping traffic and resource development activities.

Plastics are showing up in Canada’s Arctic birds

Given the exceptional vulnerability of Arctic marine ecosystems, there is an urgent need to assess the distribution, pathways and fate of microplastics in the Arctic.

In a recent paper published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, we studied whether and how microplastics could be incorporated within the sea ice structure.

Microplastics within sea ice could impact the absorption of incident solar radiation. This affects sea ice albedo — how the ice reflects solar energy — one of the key properties of sea ice in terms of regulation of the heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere.

A sampling of microplastics from a freshwater stream in Florida. Photo: Florida Sea Grant / Flickr

Measuring albedo

Changes in sea ice albedo would have strong consequences on the annual cycle of sea ice growth and melt.

To test our hypothesis, we set up a microcosm study at the Sea-ice Environmental Research Facility at the University of Manitoba, an outdoor pool where we can grow sea ice.

Two sets of 12 microcosms, measuring one cubic metre, were made using galvanized aluminium pipes as frames and cotton bed sheets as walls.

The first set was used to measuring light levels, while the second set was used to collect sea ice samples. We manually added microplastic particles to monitor their incorporation into the sea ice as it grew. We used four different concentrations: control (no particles added), low, medium and high (about 120, 380 and 1,200 particles per litre, respectively).

We used a dye called Nile red to follow the microplastics as the ice froze. Under a fluorescent light, dye caused microplastics to glow, allowing us to see how sea ice concentrates microplastics within its structure and, once incorporated, how those particles remain in the ice matrix.

We found high concentrations of particles at the sea ice surface, due to the particles’ buoyancy and to the rapid formation of ice crystals, trapping the particles as ice coalesces into a firm ice layer.

Albedo is a measurement of how well a surface reflects sunlight. Sea ice that is darker, due to the accumulation of pollution particles or microplastics, absorbs more sunlight. Photo: Alec Cooks / Unsplash

Although microplastics did not affect the sea ice growth rates, we found distinct changes in sea ice albedo in response to medium and high concentrations of microplastics microcosms.

To determine the real-world impact of our observations, we also measured microplastic concentrations from various sea ice samples collected in the Gulf of Bothnia (Baltic Sea).

We observed microplastic concentrations similar to what is observed in the Arctic Ocean (8 to 41 particles per litre), but much lower than the concentration in our microcosms experiment. At those concentrations, we do not expect microplastic incorporation to have any impact on sea ice albedo.

For regions with higher microplastic concentrations, or should microplastic concentration increase, we expect sea-ice properties might change.

These changes would affect most notably albedo, but also photochemical and photo-biological processes occurring in sea ice, such as light availability for algae living at the bottom of the ice cover, with potential impacts on the base of the Arctic food web.

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