Darrielle M. Williams

Microplastics are widespread pollutants that can ferry chemicals and pollutants in the marine environment. There is a critical need to understand the direct and indirect effects they have on our oceans.

Microplastics are ubiquitous in our environment and contaminate marine food webs, which potentially affects wildlife and human health. A relatively new and critically understudied question regarding microplastics is whether these pollutants can function as “pseudo-vectors”, transporting pathogens to hosts and environments far from sources of plastic pollution. Protozoan parasites (Toxoplasma, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium) are fecal pathogens that can infect people and animals and have been recently shown to adhere to microplastic surfaces. To investigate the extent to which plastic-pathogen association affects viability under varied environmental conditions, a mesocosm experiment was conducted. The results inform us that dependent on environmental condition and parasites species, this adherence to plastic changes the survival of these parasites in seawater.