University of Minnesota professor, students work to identify plastics in Mississippi River
It's a vital artery for life in Minnesota, running 2,350 miles across 10 states — a source for drinking water, plants, animals and recreation — but the mighty Mississippi River is vulnerable.
"There are a lot of concerns about plastic pollution in the environment," Ardeshir Ebtehaj, associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of Civil, Environmental and Geo-Engineering, said.
Ebtehaj works at the University of Minnesota's lab on the river at St. Anthony Falls. For the past four years, he and his students have been working to develop sensors that identify plastics in water.
The system is more sophisticated than what the human eye can see.
"Not just we see a plastic litter, but what's the type, what is the material of the plastic because they might be different and they might have different consequences and health and environmental consequences," Ebtehaj said.
Research shows 1% of the world's rivers are responsible for 80% of all plastic flowing into the ocean.
To shrink that stream, Ebtehaj says sensors could be placed on bridges or along shorelines, establishing simple but effective monitoring systems.
"To detect the location of the plastics that are traveling through waterway systems, and then cost-effective collection systems to prevent them to find their ways to the ocean," he said. "My hope is that down the road, we can have drones that can remove plastics from the rivers."
It's an idea he hopes to make a reality with more research and business buy-in to ensure the rivers we depend on are healthy enough for the job.
This project and a lot of the research at the St. Anthony Falls lab get their funding from the Minnesota Lottery. Voters overwhelmingly agreed to continue that funding in the last election.
