Have You Ever Seen a Microplastic? A Collaborative High School–Academia Approach for Identification, Quantification and Raising Awareness of Microplastics in a River Crossing Urban Area

The level of awareness of school students regarding the problem of microplastics (MPs) changes by age from “never seen a MPs” to “how to count them” or “I want to map their distribution” or “I want to understand their source”, as a local survey indicated. Since common resources according to the study program in high school rely on optical microscopy as the method of choice in observing microplastics, an outdoor research initiative for sampling and analyzing environmental waters from a river crossing urban areas has been developed. The level of the suspected plastic particles has been further observed in cooperation with academia, particularly with the Raman-AFM Lab of Babes-Bolyai University, for MP identification and quantification in river waters crossing urban areas at six key points (entering the city, crossing the city center, in an industrial area, near a municipal landfill area, and at the city exit), and unexpected results have been found. Higher MP concentrations in urban and agricultural areas than in the proximity of the municipal landfill suggest a significant influence of human activities on river pollution. The Raman spectroscopy and the plastic Raman database proved to be effective in MP identification. Through this process, the high school students gained hands-on experience with advanced analytical methods using their collected samples. The abundance of blue MPs (24% from total identified) and microfibers of polyester (46% from total identified) was assessed, which raised questions as to their origin, and the relevant microsample provenance from clothes and pandemic mask microfibers was analyzed to validate findings. The occurrence of polyester microfibers and polypropylene (PP) underscores the significant impact of textiles and packaging materials on river pollution, possibly being a main contributor to the high MP concentrations observed in both urban and agricultural areas. The outcome of this initiative, the first of its kind, proves the feasibility of developing young scientists’ skills to critically address current challenges within the plastisphere framework and analytical approaches across disciplines: from the bench to the classroom, to field work, to the boardroom and beyond. Topics may fall outside of the traditional curriculum but effectively circumvent it to address the “learning by doing” research skills in answer to global challenges regarding the fate of plastics. This interdisciplinary collaboration emphasizes the educational value of citizen science in fostering environmental stewardship and scientific curiosity in a young generation.