Dorothy Horn

I was super lucky to work with a great group of international scientists on how microfiber pollution is a huge issue in our environment. The book comes out May 19th!

Here is the link to buy it.

https://www.routledge.com/Polluting-Textiles-The-Problem-with-Microfibres/Weis-Falco-Cocca/p/book/9780367760755

Janeen and I travelled in our converted sprinter van for the last 3 months and one of the places I really wanted to see was the Redwood National Forest.  We parked in front of a friends house in Arcata and then headed into the park early in the morning in hopes of seeing elk and avoiding the crowds.  Along with the beautiful redwood trees we found trash every place we stopped, whether it was the side of the road, a parking lot or a trail head.  It made us both very sad and has cemented my determination to keep doing this work.  It’s not just Marine Debris, we have too much trash, too many things we use once and discard.  Beyond personal responsibility, we need large changes to stop the pollution at the source.  But in the meantime, please pick up your trash, it doesn’t just ‘go away’ because you threw it somewhere.

Here is my little video of us stopping to see the redwoods and finding garbage

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Have you been cleaning out your spaces around the house a lot lately? I have as a distraction from staring at my computer during COVID times. I found old medicines, some over the counter and others that had been prescribed.  I knew as a marine ecologist not to flush them down the drain but wasn’t sure what was safe.  So I googled it….holy cow there is a lot of convoluted information out there.  So an awesome friend of mine Amy Ehrhart and I decided to go survey some folks around Portland, Oregon (where we are both PhD students) to see what everyone else was doing with their left over pharmaceuticals.  We found that most people weren’t sure what to do either! So it wasn’t just me that was confused. Some places around town have these cool drug drop boxes, but they aren’t everywhere.  Some people had no idea what we were talking about and some folks had been told to dump them in the toilet! Oh no, that means all of those pharmacueticals were going to the rivers and oceans.  We decided to write up what we found in a publication format so that other scientists could check it out as well as bring some attention to the problem. We hoped that between what we learned and what the community learned, we can do a better job keeping our drugs un the right place when we are done with them.

Here is the publication

Leftover drug disposal- Customer behavior, pharmacistrecommendations, and obstacles to drug take-back box implementation

Please email me if you would like a pdf of the publication or you have any questions.

Microplastic Prevalence in 4 Oregon Rivers Along a Rural to Urban Gradient Applying a Cost‐Effective Validation Technique

Here is the link to the article put together by OPB who did the work with us to make this experiment happen!

Astorian Article – Researchers examine impacts of plastic on mole crabs

Pacific mole crabs don’t do so well when exposed to microplastics.

We know that our beaches are a sink for microplastics around the world and there are many little critters that live in that space between the ocean and the land, where we all love to play at the beach her on the west coast.  If you’ve ever stuck your toes in the sand, you’ve probably seen one of these little crabs.  The shorebirds eat them as well as the fish that hang out right under the waves near the beach.  I knew sand crabs were exposed to and eating microplastics from previous studies I had done, so the next step was to see if it affected them in any way.  So I put together a lab experiment and found that it increases their mortality – so crabs that were exposed to polypropylene microplastic fibers dies sooner that the crabs that were not exposed.  These exposed crabs also released their eggs sooner – so the embryo’s did not have time to develop and hatch into little crab larvae and just the exposure to microplastic fibers cause the development of the crab eggs to either slow down or speed up depending on what stage they were in.  This led to a lot more questions and we will be working on those next.

All of the news about plastic in the ocean can be fairly depressing, I know I am generally overwhelmed by all of it.  However, each one of us can do things to make a change and if enough of us do, we can change others as well.

Bring your own reusable bags, reusable silverware and straws, pick up trash if you see it laying around.  Make little changes to start and it gets easier.  I had a colleague challenge me to write down or take a picture of everything I touched in one day that was plastic….it was overwhelming!  But little bits at a time can change habits. We can make a difference and help take care of our ocean.

Here is the link https://doi.org/10.1002/lol2.10137 to grab it. Or I have uploaded the pdf.

Microplastics are ubiquitous in marine systems; however, knowledge of the effects of these particles on marine fauna is limited. Ocean‐borne plastic debris accumulates in littoral ecosystems worldwide, and invertebrate infauna inhabiting these systems can ingest small plastic particles and fibers, mistaking them for food. We examined the effect of microplastic fibers on physiological and reproductive outcomes in a nearshore organism by exposing Pacific mole crabs (Emerita analoga) to environmentally relevant concentrations of microsized polypropylene rope fibers. We compared adult gravid female crab mortality, reproductive success, and embryonic developmental rates between microfiber‐exposed and control crabs. Pacific mole crabs exposed to polypropylene rope had increased adult crab mortality, and decreased retention of egg clutches, causing variability in embryonic development rates. These effects of microplastic ingestion on a nearshore prey species have implications for predators such as surf perf and shore birds, as plastic use, and resultant microplastic presence in nearshore environments increases. Microplastics are ubiquitous in marine and sandy beach environments, posing a significant threat to the marine organisms that reside therein. The most predominant classification of microplastics found have been microfibers. Although a number of biological effects of microplastics have been measured, with documented effects on growth, little research has examined how microplastic fibers affect reproductive output and subsequent development of offspring. We examined the effects of exposure to microfibers on adult mortality, reproductive output, and embryonic development of the filter feeding Pacific mole crab (E. analoga), a dominant infaunal organism on sandy beaches. We demonstrate the effects of microplastic ingestion on mole crab mortality and embryonic development, filling a gap in the current knowledge on the impact of microplastics.

December 12th at Fort George Brewery come learn about marine debris and microplastics in our watersheds.