Rebecca Whiteash from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will host this seminar titled 'Microplastics Sampling and Analysis at the PA Department of Environmental Protection’. Rebecca will present preliminary results from a 2025 DEP pilot project focused on microplastics sampling in surface waters across the Commonwealth. Rebecca will discuss sampling protocols, comparisons across land uses, and lessons learned that will inform future monitoring efforts.
In 2025, the PA Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Clean Water conducted a microplastics data collection project, sampling surface waters at six different locations throughout the Commonwealth. The project goals included to develop microplastic collection protocols, make comparisons of abundance and types of microplastics of different land uses, same-stream longitudinal samples, and replicates. Land use comparisons included forested, developed, and agricultural streams; longitudinal samples included two samples from Spring Creek in Dauphin County, upstream and downstream of Hershey; and replicate samples included two samples from Raccoon Creek in Beaver County, near a polystyrene manufacturer's permitted discharge. Preliminary sample results suggested contamination introduced through collection protocols but also indicated differences between land uses and replicate sample collections.