Sherri “Sam” Mason became aware of environmental issues when she was 10, and she became aware of chemistry two years later; by age 12, Mason had her career path pretty much figured out.
Mason will be speaking at 12:15 p.m. today at Smith Wilkes Hall for the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, where she will talk about her groundbreaking work researching plastic microbeads that led to a nationwide ban in 2015 — and how that ban is still not enough to fully address the consequential issue.
“I’ve been an environmental chemist ever since, honestly, I can remember,” Mason said. “This has literally been my life.”
Mason started her career as an atmospheric chemist, working as a professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia. At SUNY Fredonia, she also taught classes on the environment, and eventually took over the environmental science program. Then, a “chance encounter” led to her working and teaching classes aboard the U.S. Brig Niagara on Lake Erie.
Each summer, Mason would lead a group of 20 students aboard the ship, teaching them about the Great Lakes and the impacts that atmospheric conditions and materials had on them. One of the main ways that pollutants enter the Great Lakes, she explained, is through the air, and her time aboard the Niagara led her to ask more and more questions about all of the plastic that was making its way into the lakes.
Then, she and her students found something that hadn’t been researched before: microbeads.
“Microbeads are little round spheres of plastic that were included in personal care products like toothpaste, face wash (and) body wash,” she said. “In Lake Erie, we had a couple of samples that had these astronomical numbers of these little round microbeads, probably because of a sewage overflow event, … where sewage ends up bypassing a wastewater treatment plant and ends up directly in the lake.”
The microbeads, made up of plastic compounds such as polyethylene and polyvinyl alcohol, can have many negative effects on human health and safety. Roughly 30% of the plastic used to create microbeads, Mason explained, are carcinogenic, meaning they have been linked to causing cancer in humans. Additional recent studies have revealed that microplastics, including microbeads, have been found in the bloodstreams and organs of humans.
Mason’s research on microbeads in the Great Lakes set off a chain reaction of bans on the materials, starting in New York before spreading to other states, and eventually resulting in the enactment of a nationwide ban signed by President Barack Obama in 2015. But the ban is not doing enough to combat the harmful effects of microbeads, Mason said.
“(The ban) did well, but you can never know all of the possible loopholes, and the way that it was written there is a loophole,” she said. “So microbeads that are made out of polyethylene and a similar kind of polymer are banned, but certain other polymers are still allowed. As a consequence, you still have some products that have basically microbeads still in them.”
During her lecture, Mason will delve further into her initial research on microbeads and microplastics, explaining their effects and just how widespread they are, as well as offering some potential solutions. She hopes that audiences will leave understanding the gravity and urgency of finding a solution — the United Nations considers addressing plastic pollution the second-most pressing obstacle to the long term survival of humanity — but also with a sense of empowerment and understanding that solutions are possible and not too far away.
“This is a completely man-made problem, which just means, ‘Hey, guess what? We can solve it,’ ” she said. “I want people to walk away going, ‘OK, every little bit I can do helps.’ ”
