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![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026_Stroud-insect-collection-and-scientist-John-Jackson-PhD-copy-768x1024.jpg\")
Researcher John Jackson holds insect samples\u00a0 from streams across Pennsylvania to investigate contaminants like microplastics. (Courtesy of the Stroud Water Research Center)\n<\/p>\nClay Arango, a professor of biology at Central Washington University, has researched the abundance of microplastics among aquatic insects along the Yakima River in Washington state.\n<\/p>\n
His team found no predictable increase in microplastics from upstream forested areas to the bottom of the watershed, where there is more human activity. The microplastics detected in sparsely populated areas could have fallen off the clothing of hikers and bikers, or may have traveled to the area through atmospheric patterns like storms, Arango said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe certainly know that plastic pollution is widespread. We have found microplastics in the top of mountain peaks in the European Alps, and we have found it at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest point on Earth,\u201d said Arango, who was not involved in the Stroud study. \u201cSo, it\u2019s probably fair to say that anywhere we look on the earth, we\u2019re probably going to find plastic.\u201d
\nResearcher John Jackson holds insect samples\u00a0 from streams across Pennsylvania to investigate contaminants like microplastics. (Courtesy of the Stroud Water Research Center)\n<\/p>\n
The latest research from California State University, Millersville University and Stroud offered a 30-year history of microplastics pollution levels in southeastern Pennsylvania. The study showed an increase in microplastics among insects collected between 1998 and 2010, but a decline among species collected between 2010 and 2019.\n <\/p>\n
The decrease may not indicate less pollution or greater cleanup efforts, however. Jackson said it\u2019s possible that the water flow pushed the contamination out at a faster rate than new pollution was accumulated.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s crucial for researchers to track microplastics patterns over time, said Samantha McBride, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has researched microplastics.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSome microplastics we observe today in rivers may have been released from recent sources, like a water bottle thrown in the river last week, while others originate from older plastic pollution that are still being broken down,\u201d said McBride, who was not involved in the Stroud study, in an email.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to observe microplastics within archived species lets us look into the past and better understand how microplastics levels are changing with time,\u201d she said. \u201cFor example, do microplastics track with current plastic production rates, lag a bit behind, or, are they accelerating due to older plastics finally beginning to break down?\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Arango said researchers are beginning to evaluate how plastic patterns in the environment respond to conditions like\u00a0 heavy storms or drought.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we are just producing so much plastic and so much of it is leaking into the environment, we really probably need to start thinking about plastic as a global plastic cycle,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd, how that plastic cycle intersects with water moving off the landscape, deposition into ocean environments and possibly even recycling of that plastic through the rock cycle in the same way that the rocks would be melted down and then moved back to the surface of the earth through volcanic activity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clay Arango, a professor of biology at Central Washington University, has researched the abundance of microplastics among aquatic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,8427,5206],"class_list":["post-271412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-watershed","tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}