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Australians are washing microplastics down the drain and it’s ending up on our farms
Summary
Researchers sampled sewage sludge from 13 Australian wastewater treatment plants and found that microplastics routinely survive treatment and are spread onto farmland when dried sludge is used as fertilizer. The study estimates that every resident contributes to this pathway, making biosolid application a major route for agricultural microplastic contamination.
We sampled sewage sludge from 13 wastewater treatment plants across three states. We found every resident adds microplastics to farmland, in dried sewage sludge (biosolids) used as fertiliser.