Science on Tap: Invisible Trash

Invisible Trash: Are Microplastics and Drugs in our Local Streams?

Spoiler alert: Yes! Just one watershed in Baltimore, MD contributes more than 50,000 doses of antidepressants to the Chesapeake Bay each year and a single gallon of snowmelt from Chester County can bring dozens of microplastic particles into local streams.

Join us to learn more about microplastics in the snow, water, and insects of Pennsylvania streams and the sources and dynamics of pharmaceuticals in streams around Baltimore, MD. Find out how our choices and behaviors contribute to this kind of pollution and small changes we can make to help protect our local streams.

You will have the chance to try a variety of Ship Bottom beers. Your $25 ticket includes your first beer and a selection of yummy snacks.

CRC Watersheds Association is happy to welcome speaker Dr. Megan Fork (she/they), a faculty member in the Department of Biology at West Chester University where she leads the Aquatic Ecosystems Lab. Dr. Fork’s research focuses on the direct and indirect effects of human activities such as climate change, urbanization, and construction/alteration of water bodies on the ecology of streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. She combines concepts and approaches from multiple disciplines to characterize how these anthropogenic drivers impact the complex interactions that drive the movement and transformations of nutrients, contaminants, carbon, and water in aquatic ecosystems.