Urban Atmospheric Microplastic Pollution - from creation to inhalation of MP in our living spaces

Microplastics pollution is one of the most pressing environmental challenges that we are currently facing. Despite an increasing awareness that microplastics are likely pervasive in many environments, we still have limited understanding of their sources, transport behaviour and impact. This provides many questions that desperately need answering and this is your opportunity to make your mark in this exciting and rapidly evolving field. This project aims to identify the sources, transport and potential human inhalation of microplastic pollution in our urban environment. The project is UK focused, using Glasgow and the Scottish south west coast and hinterland as the area of investigation with the potential to investigate comparative cities in Europe. Through passive deposition and active pumped sampling air from across a range of environments (intensive industrial areas, residential spaces, city centres), the atmospheric microplastic (MP) prevalence will be examined in detail. This will provide one of the first quantitative atmospheric MP source studies aimed at identifying the types of industrial activities creating secondary atmospheric MP pollution and will provide evidenced atmospheric transport analysis of how far and where this atmospheric MP can be transported to (area of impact), using atmospheric particle modelling tools such as HYSPLIT or FLEXPART.