Combined Sewer Overflows: A Hotspot for Riverine Plastic Pollution?

Tackling the global challenge of plastic pollution is at the forefront of current scientific research efforts. Nevertheless, research to date has focused upon the marine environment and there remains major gaps in our understanding of the origin, transport and fate of plastics in river systems, hindering our ability to evaluate the ecotoxicological consequences upon freshwater ecosystems.

Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) are potentially important hotspots for riverine microplastic and endocrine disrupting plasticizer pollution through the release of untreated sewage effluent from wastewater treatment works (WWTWs). Concerns posed by CSOs are highlighted in the new Environment Act and this project will seek to address fundamental questions regarding the nature and impact of microplastic and plasticizer material being released from CSOs.

Focusing upon a targeted selection of Anglian Water WWTWs encompassing a range of contrasting treatment systems, this project will integrate hydrological and analytical sciences to develop a novel quantitative evidence base on plastic pollution in riverine environments impacted by CSO discharge. Through an extensive field and laboratory campaign, the student will first gather evidence on the abundance and composition of microplastics and plasticizers in water and sediments upstream and downstream of CSOs, before developing a scalable and transferable mapping tool to identify the concentration and loading of microplastics and plasticizers from CSOs into rivers across the wider Anglian Water region.