Senior Danny Nguyen received a $350 grant from TriBeta (Beta, Beta, Beta), the national honor society in biology, for research into microplastics. Application for the grant required a detailed abstract and outline of the proposed project including research plans with specific objectives, explanation of data, treatment, and how the finding may relate to the hypothesis and existing literature.
What are microplastics?
Microplastics are what happens to plastics that aren’t disposed of properly or recycled. They break down into small fragments which spread very easily in the environment. Microplastics are broadly defined as plastics that are less than 5mm in length. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognizes microplastics to be a growing threat to many organisms in ecosystems due to its high toxicity risk and the current lack of regulation.
“The grant money will allow us to afford equipment to integrate with our microscopes so we can accurately capture pictures of microplastics under the microscopes,” Nguyen said. “With them, we will be able to proceed with our next step of research which is to measure the size of microplastics. It is very crucial to understand the correlation between size and prevalence of microplastics.”
The project was a continuation of a research seminar in the fall of 2020 taught by Dr. Jennifer Sweatman, assistant professor of biology, so the students were given a good background to start from. Nguyen worked with Sophie Schaumann ’24, Amelia Landsverk ’23, and Luke Young ’24 dissecting more than 100 waterfowl samples and identifying microplastics in them.
“This research project is very special because it is a citizen-science project, in which we include citizens (the hunters) into the scientific process,” Nguyen said. “Hunters from Devils Lake donated waterfowl samples to us, which helped us tremendously in the process of studying the presence of microplastics in waterfowls' digestive systems.”
Sweatman’s research has always focused on human impacts on the environment, but she had always worked in marine environments. She wanted to be more involved in local conservation practices, so she started to think more about the conservation concerns in North Dakota and the Midwest.
“More articles, both scientific and common news articles, have been published recently about the increasing amount of microplastics (mostly fibers from washing synthetic materials like fleece in our region) and its prevalence in water bodies across the Midwest,” Sweatman said. “One question I became curious about was the effect microplastics have on waterfowl populations.”
There isn't much research on microplastics in waterfowl in general and no research in this area where waterfowl are an economically valuable species that draw in hunters from across the country.
“We looked at the abundance of microplastics in ducks that feed by dabbling (feeding primarily on the surface of water) compared to ducks that feed by foraging on the ground,” Sweatman said. “We also looked at the distribution of microplastics in different organs of the digestive tract of waterfowl.”
Nguyen said that microplastic abundance was significantly higher in ground foragers than in dabblers. In the samples from 102 waterfowl, the team identified a total of 460 microplastics, 69.57% (320 particles) and 30.43% (140 particles) of which were found in dabblers and ground foragers, respectively.
“It was a lot of work going through the digestive tract, especially the intestines, but I learned many new lab skills which are different from what we learn in class,” Nguyen added.
Nguyen got involved because he wanted to integrate biology and environmental science.
“The plastic crisis has been alarmingly concerning as it is digested by many organisms which can alter their physiology and well-being,” he said. “Findings of our study can be used not only to guide future research focused on the impacts of microplastics on waterfowl but also to establish a foundation for conservation and policy-making regarding microplastics.”