Annika Jahnke, Dana Kühnel and Christian Schmidt recently wrote a very interesting article on the Bertelsmann Stiftung's “transforming economies” blog entitled “Mehr als Müll: Warum Plastik auch zu Klimawandel und Artenverlust beiträgt” (only available in German).
Gisela Lannig: I was invited on February 20, 2025, to the 13th meeting of the Round Table on Marine Litter, Lower Saxony Ministry for Environment, Energy, and Climate Protection, with the presentation "Microplastic Entries from Erosion of Rotor Blades of Wind Turbines."
We held our final progress meeting back-to-back with a Stakeholder Workshop @UFZ on October 21-23. Read more under "Currently ongoing in P-LEACH". Thanks to everyone to making the meeting such a great experience!
Dr. Frank Menger (Hereon) lately gave an interview in the german radio “Deutschlandfunk” in the series “Umwelt und Verbraucher” called "Chemiecocktail Kunstoff: Wieviel landet im Wasser?". It is available only in German!
The P-LEACH consortium was very well represented at this year's SETAC
conference in Seville, Spain (May 5-9, 2024) and presented many exciting new
results.
Recent progress of the P-LEACH consortium and future steps were discussed at GEOMAR on January 30-31, 2024.
Conference presentation
Frank Menger presented his current work at the International Conference on Non-Target Screening (ICNTS 23), 2023, Erding (Germany): "Plastic, water & the sun - Characterization of chemicals leaching from plastic under UV light treatment". Another presentation was "Environmental Chemicals and Human Health" at the HEAL 2023 – Collective Action for Health, Environment and Climate, 2023 in Australia.
Workshop presentation
Ole Klein was given the chance to present the striking results of our UV-leaching experiments on October 29,2024 at the "Microplastics Meeting 2024" in Geesthacht.
He presented that it is crucial to examine the total elemental fingerprint of plastic products to better distinguish between intentionally added additives and possible contaminants or residues from plastic production.
These results will help better assess plastic leaches' potential risks and toxicity.
Lars Hildebrandt presented "Development and Validation of Methods for the Sampling, Extraction and Analysis of Marine Microplastics" at the Agilent LDIR 8700 User Community Meeting 2023.
Progress meeting @ Hereon
P-LEACH team joining the progress meeting in Geesthacht, with team Helgoland on Zoom as a result of the storm.
Thanks for all the updates presented in Geesthacht on July 6-7, and looking forward to our upcoming joint experiments!
New publication
New insights into the microbial communities on microplastic samples from the North Atlantic and Great Pacific Garbage Patches. Please see https://doi.org/10.5897/AJMR2022.9682.
