Ocean & Climate Seminar: "Textile fibers in the marine environment: sampling methods, abundance, and composition of this new emerging pollutant", by Dr. Giuseppe Suaria

Dr. Giuseppe Suaria, Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) in Lerici, Italy, will be giving an online seminar in the framework fo the Ocean & Climate Seminar.

Title: "Textile fibers in the marine environment: sampling methods, abundance, and composition of this new emerging pollutant"

Speaker: Dr. Giuseppe Suaria, Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) in Lerici, Italy

Date: Wednesday, 28th April 2021
Time: 10.30h
Venue: Online. https://zoom.us/j/97950042410?pwd=NFlPVzJwVitIV2kzWko1eDFnY3BNZz09

Microfibres are one of the most ubiquitous particulate pollutants, occurring in all environmental compartments. They are often assumed to be microplastics, but include natural as well as synthetic textile fibers and are perhaps best treated as a separate class of pollutants given the challenges they pose in terms of identification and contamination. Microfibers have been traditionally ascribed to the 'microplastics' family, and their widespread occurrence in the natural environment is commonly reported in plastic pollution studies, with the misleading belief that they largely derive from wear and tear of synthetic fabrics. Their supposed synthetic nature has been largely used to motivate their persistence in the environment, thus explaining their presence in virtually all compartments of the planet, including sea-ice, deep-seas, soils, atmospheric fall-out, foods and drinks. In addition, microfibres have been largely ignored by traditional methods used to sample floating microplastics at sea, which use 300–500 μm mesh nets that are too coarse to sample most textile fibers. There is thus a need for a consistent set of methods for sampling microfibres in seawater. In this seminar, we will review the state of the art about textile fibers pollution in the marine environment, presenting novel results about their abundance and composition in oceanic waters worldwide. Sampling methods for microfibers will be also critically discussed, as well as sources, impacts, degradation times and potential remediation strategies. 

Bio
Giuseppe Suaria. Early Career Researcher and PhD candidate in Marine Ecology at the University of the Balearic Islands. He is currently working as a full-time research scientist at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Italian Research Council (CNR-ISMAR) in Lerici, Italy. His work focuses on the spatial and temporal patterns of abundance, distribution, composition, transport and accumulation of floating anthropogenic litter in the marine environment as well as on the harmonization and inter-calibration of survey methods and sampling techniques for macro and microplastics. He has authored more than 25 international publications about plastic pollution in the marine environment and in recent years he has participated to more than 20 research expeditions in Antarctica, in the Atlantic Ocean, in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea, totaling well over 400 days of field work at sea. In 2017 he had an active role during the Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE), being responsible for sampling microplastics during the entire voyage.