Lake Ontario Center for Microplastics and Human Health - Human health is inextricably tied to the Great Lakes, which hold 20% of the Earth's surface freshwater. The Lakes experience wide variations in abiotic conditions including water temperature, pH, storm frequency and runoff, ice cover, and precipitation. Human debris, including plastic, also impacts the Lakes and those who rely on them. Plastic enters the Lakes as microplastic (MP; particles <5 mm) or as macro debris that may degrade to MP. There are significant knowledge gaps about the cycle of plastic in the Lakes, but MPs have been found in all lake habitats, throughout the food chain, and in tap water. The potential human health effects of Lake associated exposure to MP are vastly understudied. How MP inputs, fate and impacts are affected by spatial and temporal heterogeneity present in the watershed and nearshore regions of the Lake is also unknown. Addressing such complex problems requires engaging multiple community partners and a multidisciplinary systems science approach. The over-arching goal of the Lake Ontario Center for Microplastics and Human Health is to prevent negative human health impacts of MP in the Great Lakes by engaging multiple partners in research, supporting environmental health literacy, and informing solutions. Because the Lake Ontario region is representative of the Great Lakes basin, our work will be broadly transferable. Our innovative approach assesses plastics as they exist in the environment: as mixtures of post-consumer plastic polymers, degraded by the environment, and covered with biofilm. A major challenge of MP research is standardization of materials and methods, which we address with a novel Materials and Metrology Core that supports and is integral to all 3 research projects. Project 1 will holistically assess plastic input, degradation, ecotoxicity, and microorganisms in plastic-associated biofilms. Project 1 culminates in modeling input, fate and transport of microplastics in Lake Ontario. Project 2 will build on Project 1's foundation to assess the potential for dermal and lung exposure to MPs by leveraging nanomembrane technologies to analyze mammalian cytotoxicity and bioactivity of natural and experimental particle mixtures in combination with variation in temperature and availability of metals and persistent organic pollutants. Project 3 extends the investigation to the whole organism by using the amphibian Xenopus to rigorously assess the biodistribution of MPs and impacts on development, fitness, immune homeostasis and antiviral immunity, under varied conditions of temperature. Given the high degree of evolutionary conservation of vertebrate physiology, the outcomes from this study are very relevant to human health. Our Community Engagement Core involves multiple partners in all aspects of the Center, including community science, direct action, development and dissemination of materials, and building partners' capacity. Our Administrative Core coordinates across two institutions (the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology), supports multidirectional communication with external stakeholders, and evaluates progress toward Center goals.
