Starting in 2024, a ban on single-use plastic water bottles in the city of South Lake Tahoe will go into effect. “Just because we can’t collectively see it, the science shows there’s an issue and we should respond now before we can see it with our own eyes.” “Its beauty kind of hides the problem,” Patterson added. “I think it’s that unique setting that has allowed a beautiful place like this to potentially have really high concentrations of microplastics in the water over time. “It’s a highly protected lake, but it’s protected in a way that allows the balance of humans to come here and use it and enjoy it,” he said. Following Fourth of July weekend, the nonprofit headed a beach cleanup where volunteers removed more than four tons of trash from the water and shores of Lake Tahoe. Jesse Patterson, chief executive officer for the nonprofit League to Save Lake Tahoe, said that’s why the findings didn’t shock him. There’s “no doubt there’s a significant source of atmospheric deposition to Lake Tahoe,” she said.Īnother possible source of Tahoe’s high microplastic concentrations is the pollution that follows its tourism industry. Roads are another major source.īrahney said microplastics kicked up from the friction on highways around Lake Tahoe could get caught up in the atmosphere, then deposited into the lake, despite its small watershed. Brahney said that’s why oceans are a huge source of atmospheric microplastics, which can deposit all over. Oceans have been a repository of plastic pollution for more than a century, accumulating plastics that can take hundreds of years to degrade. “Nothing really surprises me anymore with microplastic work,” Brahney told The Times. He pointed to research from Janice Brahney, an associate professor at Utah State University’s watershed sciences department, whose research on “ plastic rain” reaching national parks and wilderness areas made headlines in 2020. Tahoe has more than 15 million visitors each year.Īlthough the study did not cover the source of microplastics - that’s what the researchers will tackle next - Chandra said he suspects the large surface area primes the lake to receive more microplastics from the atmosphere. He added that the team was expecting to find Tahoe toward the bottom of the list, not at the top, especially because wastewater has been barred from entering the lake since the 1970s.īut there were a couple of characteristics that made Tahoe “strikingly different” from some of the others - namely, its large surface area paired with the amount of recreation it sees. The team behind the study placed surface nets on lakes around the world, a practice commonly used for collecting data on marine microplastics, sampling lakes with a range of depths, population densities and watershed sizes.Ĭompared with the other 37 lakes, Tahoe had a relatively small watershed size - meaning the area of land that drains water into the lake - and some of the best water quality, Chandra said. “But what this study shows you is that fresh waters, including lakes and reservoirs, are important conduits of plastic.” “We often think about plastics being developed in watersheds and then moving into the ocean and collecting in the ocean,” Chandra said. Every lake sampled - even the most remote lakes - contained microplastics. Sudeep Chandra, the director of the Global Water Center at the University of Nevada, Reno, and co-author of the study, said the research highlights just how pervasive microplastics have been in freshwater ecosystems. The tiny plastic particles, less than the size of a sesame seed, have been found all over - in the ocean, in Arctic snow, in the air we breathe, the food we eat and in our blood. another project (also not very good) the tahoe, which appears to be someones badly shortened version of the suburban's 3d model.It joins a growing body of research sounding the alarm on the prevalence of microplastics. may release here as a beta or som shid if enough people want, but im warning you right now it probably wont be very great. Have made a lot of improvements to it, including the fact that it is no longer a grand marshall meshslap. I have been working on a few things recently, including this revamp of that old af suburban mod.
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