{"id":3031,"date":"2014-09-19T12:56:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T17:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=3031"},"modified":"2014-09-19T12:56:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T17:56:55","slug":"microplastic-pollution-found-in-the-st-lawrence-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/microplastic-pollution-found-in-the-st-lawrence-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Microplastic pollution found in the St. Lawrence River<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3032\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/microplastics-CJFAS.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3032\" class=\"wp-image-3032 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/microplastics-CJFAS.jpg\" alt=\"microplastics-CJFAS\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3032\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Microbeads collected from St. Lawrence River sediments in summer 2013. (Photo credit: Guy l\u2019Heureux)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Concentrations of microplastic particles in the St. Lawrence are as high as has been observed in the world\u2019s most contaminated marine sediments, a new study shows. This is\u00a0also the first time such pollutants have been found in freshwater sediments.<\/p>\n<p>The authors dug up microplastics (in the form of polyethylene \u2018microbeads\u2019, &lt;2 mm diameter) from the bottom of the river in ten\u00a0locations between Lake St. Francis, south of Montreal, and Quebec city. At some locations, the researchers measured over 1000 microbeads per liter of sediment.<\/p>\n<p>The effects of ingestions of microplastic by fishes and invertebrates are still poorly understood and warrant further studies the authors conclude.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrcresearchpress.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1139\/cjfas-2014-0281#.VBsqkPldV8E\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the <em>Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences<\/em><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/span>on\u00a0<strong>September 3, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Rowshyra A. Casta\u00f1eda,\u00a0McGill University, Quebec<\/h4>\n<h4>Suncica Avlijas,\u00a0McGill University, Quebec<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concentrations of microplastic particles in the St. Lawrence are as high as has been observed in the world\u2019s most contaminated marine sediments, a new study shows. This is\u00a0also the first time such pollutants have been found in freshwater sediments. The authors dug up microplastics (in the form of polyethylene \u2018microbeads\u2019, &lt;2 mm diameter) from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1445,215,225,1286,849],"class_list":["post-3031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-conservation","tag-environment","tag-oceanography","tag-pollution","tag-quebec-en"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/microplastics-CJFAS.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-MT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3038,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3031\/revisions\/3038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}