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CHICAGO (WLS) — A significant effort is underway to gain insights into the presence of microplastics in Chicago’s drinking water, as well as across the United States.
Political figures, environmental advocates, and state leaders, including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to initiate a comprehensive water monitoring initiative to detect microplastics in drinking supplies.
According to researchers speaking with ABC7’s I-Team, the precise concentration of these particles in drinking water remains a mystery due to the absence of a dedicated federal or local assessment program. This lack of data is troubling, especially as scientists highlight the dramatic rise of microplastics in our environment.
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These minuscule plastic particles are often too small to be seen without magnification.
So tiny are these particles that they can be ingested through contaminated water, food, or even airborne exposure, as noted by Tim Hoellein, a biologist and expert in microplastics from Loyola University.
The I-Team has diligently tracked the proliferation of microplastics and their impact on human health for almost ten years.
Hoellien says microplastics in the environment have been increasing exponentially since the mid-1900s.
“We were able to go to the Field Museum and pick out some fish specimens that had been collected from local rivers over the past 100 years, and what we found was there was no microplastic in their guts before, about the 1950s,” Hoellien said. “After that we saw the microplastic and it increased in an accelerating fashion.”
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But while scientific researchers are witnessing the widespread proliferation of microplastics in the environment, there is still no Illinois or federal surveillance program to track levels in drinking water. The advocacy group Food and Water Watch sent a petition signed by seven governors from across the U.S., including Illinois, urging the Environmental Protection Agency to add microplastics to pollution monitoring rules under the Safe Drinking Water Act.
“We’re seeing increasing amounts of micro plastics and other chemical contaminants in our drinking water, in our Great Lakes, and it’s of substantial concern. Unfortunately, right now, we don’t have a uniform methodology or standards that all the states are using, or even the federal government is using,” said Andrea Densham, the senior policy advisor with Alliance for the Great Lakes.
Densham says creating a program to measure microplastic levels in the water we drink is vital to public health.
“We’re finding in human brains, lungs and in the bloodstream that that is really concerning, and it’s concerning for young people and infants as well as everyday folks and for the elderly. I mean, I think what we have is an emerging crisis,” she said.
There is growing scientific evidence that ingesting plastics may be linked to health problems.
Hoellien says they can mimic hormones, and some may even cause cancer, but he says surveillance is a tall order because the plastic particles are so complex.
“So, coming up with one way to measure it and one statement about its physiological impacts, it’s much harder for such a large group of materials,” he explained.
California is the only state to implement its own microplastics monitoring program, something the experts say Illinois could draw on to create its own program.
