Plastics Lab

Contamination of marine ecosystems with microplastics is now recognized as a serious and growing threat to sea life. The Ocean Wise Plastics Lab is an Environmental Microplastics Facility which aims to deliver cutting-edge technical insight into the source, transport, fate and effects related to microplastics in Canada’s aquatic environments. The lab utilizes state-of-the-art analytical techniques and instrumentation including a high-resolution Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer capable of identifying the composition of microplastic particles as small as 5 microns in size. The lab employs 12 research staff studying microplastics occurrence in laundry machine outflow, seawater, municipal wastewater and the stomachs and organs of aquatic animals.