Wild swimmer falls ill after testing water for microplastic pollution in national parks
A project to test water from all of the UK’s national parks for microplastic contamination had to be halted at the first step after the wild swimmer collecting the samples fell ill from pollution.
Laura Owen Sanderson, a former art teacher, is collecting water samples from all 15 national parks, which will be tested for microplastic particles so small they are invisible to the naked eye, by a team at Bangor University.
They hope to raise awareness of the emerging scale of microplastic pollution and have it recognised as an official pollutant under the regulations that monitor the health of the country’s waterways.
New data this week showed all of England's rivers and lakes have failed tests for pollution, a fact that Ms Owen Sanderson experienced firsthand after she fell ill swimming through what she believes to have been agricultural slurry in the River Cleddau, in Pembrokeshire.
“I chose the national parks because I thought they would be the cleanest,” she said, just ahead of a swim on her fifth stop, in Loch Lomond, Scotland. “But when we went to get out, the banks were just banks of slurry.” Forced to swim through the area, she contracted gastroenteritis, had to take a week off the project and will have to go through further tests for parasites.
“I just can't believe that as a national park that's allowed to go on,” she said. “This has been an eye opener because I knew that our urban rivers, some of those are gross. But national parks, I didn't realize it was exactly the same picture.”
In total, Ms Owen Sanderson will swim 980km, collecting four litres of water from the source, the middle and the water’s edge at each location. Each swim takes between two to five days and she is followed by another team member in a raft who collects the samples as she swims.
The idea for the project came after Ms Owen Sanderson tested the waters at several locations from Glaslyn, at the top of Snowdon, right down to the sea.
“We didn't expect to find it in the Glaslyn because it's really pure water. But we found it at the top, and all the way through the water system,” she said.
“It looks like drinking water, so you can't see any plastic in it. Until they run it through the lights in the lab, it actually looks like a glass of water that you could drink.”
Although growing research has shown microplastic pollution to be widespread across the globe, relatively little is known about the impact on human, plant and animal health.
Christian Dunn, a microplastics expert at Bangor University, said it was vital to tackle the pollution before it becomes too late.
“If it is going to be a case that they do have detrimental effects to your health, then this is a ticking time bomb,” he said. “What we don't want is for plastic to be the tobacco of the 21st century.”
Sources of microplastics include clothing fibres, tyres and single-use plastics, and studies have shown that the tiniest particles can travel through the air, as well as washing into waterways via the sewage system.
A spokesperson for Defra said the UK was a “global leader” in tackling plastic pollution.
“But we know there is more to do, which is why we are funding ground-breaking research into how microplastics enter waterways and working with the water industry to find new methods to detect, measure and remove microplastics from wastewater.
“All this flows into our clear ambition to return at least three quarters of our waters to be as close to their natural state as soon as possible.”
