Researching microplastics as a public servant

The issue with plastics and whether from the micro or the nano side is they're everywhere. They're in the air we breathe, they're in the water we drink, they're in the food we consume. And right now we're at the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg in understanding the implications to human health. Most of my research focuses within the realm of aquatic toxicology, meaning that I want to understand how different contaminants that enter aquatic, whether freshwater and marine systems, how they impact organisms, ecosystem processes, but also the link between environmental health and human health because what we do to the environment ultimately impacts humans. I was two years old and I think I told my mom and dad I wanted to be a doctor and my mom never let me forget it. And at that time it was more like an MD, it was just something I saw on TV and I was like yeah I'll be a doctor. After I got my PhD she asked me if I was going to go back and get my MD because she was very specific about me becoming a doctor. and my dad who uh he passed when I was 14 but my dad was a school teacher for 33 years and he got a master's in education and a master's in science I believe and so my dad was very established and very educated I didn't know any of this growing up as a kid but I as I got older I started seeing the connections between my dad and myself I went to the Citadel a military college in South Carolina for my undergraduate degree and it was after my freshman or knob year that I needed a work-study job there was an opening to clean glassware in an aquatic toxicology lab. I didn't know that it would change my life. I started listening more and more to the research that was happening and the lab itself was really cool because this is 2010 and we had three young black men that are doing graduate research which even now is a rarity so to see that in 2010 I saw myself and so I started not just doing glassware but helping in the field going out and collecting samples and by my junior year I knew that's what I wanted to do is that I wanted to be a scientist and so I stayed on to the Citadel for my masters and that's really where microplastics started. Microplastics are typically defined as plastic particles that are less than five millimeter in dimension or size but if we were to go up to a random person on the street I would just go up and simply just pluck one of the hairs out of the arm if with their permission and just show them that not so much the length but the The diameter of that would be something on a micro scale size. Say trash that is waiting for the garbage men to pick it up, and you have a storm event, and you knock over your trash, and that trash enters a storm drain. That storm drain transports that to a nearby stream. And what happens with those big plastic items is over time, they're exposed to UV degradation, they're exposed to microbial colonization. They also are coming in contact with the rocks and gravel. So all of these different forces act together to then fragment or degrade the plastic where they start producing these smaller and smaller amounts of microplastics. Another mechanism is through laundering where through our clothing if you have say nylon or polyester clothing those are plastic polymers by design and typically if you were to put it through a wash cycle you'll produce thousands to hundreds of thousands microfibers that then goes into the environment. Plastics were actually seen as an eco-friendly option when it was first created because it limited us from having to use natural resources like glass and tusk and ivory and paper and wood to actually package goods for consumables. The road to where we are is paved by good intentions, it's just that we find out down the road that there's negative implications associated with that. I think it's important to inform people about what we find and the implications that there could be negative associations or adverse health effects associated with microplastics, but also we don't underscore that it's only microplastics. Again, there's thousands of pollutants that we're exposed to, different things that we're consuming but for me microplastics is my means to answer these questions that I can't do it all and I wish I had the means to do it all and I think this is why scientific research is important and funding is important so we can do more collaborative research from different areas of different disciplines. A lot of my passion of the research is driven by my own curiosity but I do appreciate that the work that I do has a connection globally because there's a global problem in our own backyard. I can do meaningful research that I care about in my community and it has a global appeal. I think we saw within the COVID era of COVID vaccines that, I don't know if we do a good enough job as scientists communicating what we do to the public so that they do care and so that there is this trust because we have an obligation to take our work and connect it to the everyday people that support it, taxpayers. Everything we do is funded by taxpayers. Taxpayers drive our labs, they drive our research, our goals, our interests, so the least thing that we can do is connect it to them. And it doesn't mean everything's negative. Some things have no effect or some things are positive and being sure that I'm not skewing their viewpoints on things because it fits a narrative, but just being honest and transparent and building trust between at least my research group and the community. We're public servants and as a scientist, I'm here to serve people.