Currently ongoing in P-LEACH

P-LEACH Stakeholder Meeting @UFZ on October 22-23

The UFZ hosted a very interactive Stakeholder Meeting with the P-LEACH consortium and representatives from regulation, industry, an instrument provider, a non-governmental organization, a funding organization and academia on October 22-23. After a warm welcome by Prof. Rolf Altenburger, the meeting was opened by two keynote lectures held by Dr. Heather Leslie (on-site) and Prof. Hans Peter Arp (online) (open UFZ-wide as a Healthy Planet Lecture).

Afterwards, 6 of the 7 P-LEACH postdoctoral fellows from UFZ, AWI, Hereon and GEOMAR presented the P-LEACH Storyline regarding the investigated consumer products and custom-made plastics with known additive composition. Presentations spanned the comprehensive bioanalytical and chemical analytical toolboxes that were developed and their joint application for studies simulating the leaching of chemicals from the chosen materials, generating unique multidimensional insights. The remainder of the meeting was dedicated to stakeholder spotlight presentations and included plenty of discussion time on the P-LEACH research outcomes, lessons learnt and next steps including outreach formats to different academic and non-academic sectors. Everyone agreed that the P-LEACH strategy is very promising for reducing the complexity of studies on leachates, and not just for future research. At the same time, targeted communication is necessary to make different stakeholder groups aware on the toolboxes and their benefits.

Thanks to everyone involved for this great exchange!

Participants of the Stakeholder Workshop @UFZ

New research paper in Journal of Hazardous Materials

Screening the release of chemicals and microplastic particles from diverse plastic consumer products into water under accelerated UV weathering conditions — We are happy to share that our first big collaborative study on plastics and associated chemicals liberated from artificially UV-weathered consumer products has been accepted as a research paper in Journal of Hazardous Materials! For more details, see Menger and Römerscheid et al., DOI 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.135256

P-LEACH progress presented at the SEB Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (July 2-5, 2024)

Daria Bedulina_SEB 2024 — At the SEB conference, Daria Bedulina from the AWI Bremerhaven presented results from the P-Leach project on the topic "Does the erosion of wind turbine blades effect the metabolome of the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis?".

P-LEACH progress broadly presented at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) 34th Annual Meeting in Seville, Spain (May 5-9, 2024)

Poster Klein et al. SETAC 2024 — Ole Klein: I'm delighted to have been given the opportunity to present some results of the P-LEACH project at the SETAC in Seville, Spain. What happens to inorganic plastic additives when plastics are exposed to sunlight? A little preview: the additives do not seem to be the only source of heavy metal leaching...

Frank Menger_at_SETAC_Seville — Frank Menger: In my talk titled "The Role of UV Light on the Aquatic Leaching and Transformation of Plastic Additives" I got to present our combined efforts in P-LEACH, linking analytical with effects data to better understand the risks associated with aqueous plastic leaching, specifically when the sun is shining.

Daria Bedulina_SETAC 2024 — Daria Bedulina: I am pleased to present some results from the P-Leach project on the topic "The toxic effect of plastic leachate on marine periwinkle *Littorina littorea*".

P-LEACH progress presented at POFIV General Assembly in Karlsruhe in May, 2023

Distributing samples — Distributing particles and leachates amongst the P-LEACH subprojects

P-LEACH progress meeting at AWI in November, 2022

P-LEACH consortium discussion progress at AWI

P-LEACH kickoff at Hereon in July, 2022

Project pre-kickoff meeting at UFZ in September, 2021

P-LEACH team preparing for the project start

News

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 presenting at the conference.

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 presenting at the "Microplastic 2024"

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.

Treatment of seawater samples

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.

New paper out

Check out the latest paper: Plastic-Associated Chemicals: Late Lessons from Early Equilibrium Partitioning Science

Progress meeting @ Hereon

Project team at the progress meeting 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.