The Great Lakes are getting polluted with the same plastic debris that comprises the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a range of trash in the Pacific Ocean roughly twice the size of Texas.
According to researchers, Lake Erie has up to 1.7 million pieces of plastic debris per square mile, making for a greater density than parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
"The massive production of plastic and inadequate disposal has made debris an important and constant pollutant on beaches and in oceans around the world, and the Great Lakes are not an exception," Lorena M. Rios of the University of Wisconsin-Superior said at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans.
Because of the small size of the plastic particles, much of the pollution in the Great Lakes goes unnoticed. Among the samples collected by Rios and her team, 85 percent were less than two-tenths of an inch in size. The trash also poses an environmental hazard, as fish sometimes mistake the plastic debris for food. This conclusion was confirmed by Rios' analysis of fish stomachs.
"Fish are eating the plastic because it mimics food," Rios said. "In the Pacific, if you're collecting plastic you can find it with a net — you can catch the plastic but you can't see it because most of it is tiny, clear or blue. It's the same in Lake Erie."
Though Rios is studying all of the Great Lakes, she is focusing on Lake Erie as a starting point due to its location and size.
"The logical thing is, the higher the population, the more you can find plastic, because people are the source," she said. "Lake Erie is a small and shallow lake, while Superior is huge and much deeper."
In early April it was reported that noxious algae blooms were taking over Lake Erie, turning the lake a nasty green.
