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Fluffy Rivers: How Our Clothes Can Harm Rivers and The Oceans
Summary
This short educational article explains how synthetic clothing fibers are released into rivers and oceans when washed, contributing to microplastic pollution. Microfibers are small enough to be eaten by animals from the tiniest plankton to large fish, blocking their digestive systems. It is a general-audience piece aimed at children or young adults rather than original research.
Microplastics are one of the most well-known types of environmental pollution. A microplastic is any piece of plastic smaller than 5 mm (about the size of one of the circles on top of a Lego ® block). Microplastics come in a variety of shapes and they can be eaten by even the smallest animals, blocking their stomachs and intestines. Many of the clothes that we wear are made from microplastic fibers. These fibers are released from our clothes when we wear and wash them, and they can eventually end up in the environment. We collected water samples from three rivers in the UK over 12 months, to see if they contained microplastic fibers. All the rivers contained clothing fibers, but most of the fibers were not made from plastics. Natural fibers made from materials like cotton (from plants) and wool (from sheep) were much more common than plastic fibers.