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Plastics in Paradise: Quantifying Microplastics in Lake Champlain Beaches
Summary
Researchers quantified and characterized microplastics on Lake Champlain beaches, finding contamination at all sampled sites with fragments and fibers as the dominant particle types. The study documents that even inland freshwater shorelines accumulate significant microplastic loads over time.
Microplastics (MP’s) are pollutants that accumulate on shorelines and marine/freshwater ecosystems. MP’s are <5mm in size and include hard and soft plastics (e.g., fragments, foams, rubbers, fibers). These plastics are a concern for ecosystem health due to their longevity and abundance in freshwater settings. The goals for this study was to quantify and characterize microplastics in Lake Champlain beaches, specifically City Beach and Ausable Beach. Additionally, a density separation method was piloted to better characterize microplastics <1mm in size from very fine sediment. Over 2024-2025, we surveyed the top layer of dried sand from local beaches in the Lake Champlain Basin and size separated them using sieves ranging from 5mm-1mm. Concomitantly, we collected macro- (5mm-25mm) and mesoplastics (>25mm) along the strandline. Previous research determined that MPs <1mm size are poorly extracted in fine sediments so we used potassium carbonate (ρ = 1.54 g/cm-3) to density separate fine particles for future characterization of those particulates under the microscope. We determined that City beach samples contained approximately twice the MP abundance as did Ausable beach. The most common MP morphologies were foams, fragments and rubber of medium sizes (2.35mm, 1.18mm). MP abundance was greater in low beach visitation areas as compared to high. Fragments, wrappers, cigarette butts and pellets are the most common morphologies found in the beach macroplastic samples. Density separation of beach sand only produced fiber and fiber bundle morphologies. City beach likely contains more plastics than Ausable because it has higher rates of regular public visitation. Low visited sections of the beaches may have a higher abundance of plastics due to beach grooming; highly visited areas are groomed more often than low visited areas. Density separation is an effective method for isolating fibers and fiber bundles that would normally get caught within a sieve. This research has helped raise awareness that regular beach grooming and Clean Up outreach events can help reduce plastic pollution along our shorelines. Additionally, fiber characterization has been a long-standing challenge for MP researchers, especially those <1mm in size and this research has demonstrated that density separation can be an effective tool for processing these ubiquitous plastics.
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