The search for microplastics and cocaine

The third day had even fewer airboat trails and more grass challenges. The team also had to find a way, at the end of the day, to barge through a massive wall of cattails to find the creek to their campsite.

But before wrestling with cattails, Baker had science to conduct.

“I’ve already been studying contaminants in the Great Lakes, so to be able to look at this from one side of the state to the other, and get this spatial scale of contaminants, was an exciting opportunity. There’s not many times you get to go into a remote and understudied area,” she said.

Baker searches for contaminants such as microplastics and pharmaceuticals. She knows they’ve infiltrated areas around the Everglades, such as the Gulf of Mexico and Biscayne Bay, where bonefish have antidepressants in their flesh. She wants to look at how mangroves and the sawgrass might or might not be filtering those out.

Baker said that microplastics — tiny fragments of plastic that have found their way into the environment — are a concern because animals can ingest them as if they’re plant particles or plankton. Once in a fish’s or bird’s digestive system, they often just stay there and don’t break down, which can affect animal health. (Microplastics can get into our bodies as well, both through food and water.)

There’s much we don’t know about the effects of microplastics, and Baker says the implications are still being studied. Her lab, though, has shown that some pieces are as small as a red blood cell, and can enter the circulatory system. “We find them in the liver and brain and other tissues” of the fish she and her colleagues study, she said.

She and her peers at UF also are looking for pesticides, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, environmental DNA and PFAS contaminants.

“These contaminants commonly enter the environment through wastewater, household, and industrial effluents and septic systems. In the Great Lakes, we were finding contaminants, ranging from acetaminophen to cocaine, so we’re looking for those [in the Everglades] as well.

“Being able to get this baseline — my hope is that other scientists can use the data and build on it. I’m hoping it can be a jumping-off point for a number of people to get involved and move science forward.”

Baker says she’ll have the results in a few months.