Logo remediation technology
October 14 - 16, 2025
The Westin
Westminster, CO
Conveniently Located between Boulder & Denver
search
linkedin youtube
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
October 14 - 16, 2025
The Westin
Westminster, CO
Conveniently Located between Boulder & Denver
Logo remediation technology
  • HOME
  • SUBMIT ABSTRACT
  • REGISTER
    • Registration Fees
    • Register Now!
  • ATTEND
    • Agenda
    • Why Attend The Summit
    • Attended Companies
    • 2024 Photo Gallery
  • PRESENTERS
    • Scientific Advisory Board
    • Platform Presenters
    • Poster Presenters
  • SPONSOR/EXHIBIT
    • Become a Sponsor or Exhibitor
    • Exhibit Floor Plan
    • Exhibitor Resources
    • Event Logos & Ads
  • STUDENTS
    • Student Program
    • Past Student Winners
  • TRAVEL
  • NEWSLETTERS
  • CONTACT
    • Stay Connected
    • Show Staff
TestingCompoundsEmerging ContaminantsPFASPlastics

College of Charleston identifies contaminants from plastic pollution in bay

Researchers investigate PFAS levels in Sarasota Bay dolphins, who like humans, eat fish contaminated by plastic. Here's how their NIEHS project is progressing.

fish plastic

Students measure fish in Associate Professor Leslie Hart’s lab. Photos by Catie Cleveland

January 13, 2023

In a nondescript room in the recesses of the Willard A. Silcox Physical Education and Health Center, four students sit around a lab table dissecting small fish. Though it’s not immediately evident, they’re engaged in work that will lead to new insights regarding the dangers of plastic pollution. And those dangers don’t solely pertain to these fish or the dolphins that eat them. They also directly threaten human health.

“That’s really the underlying goal of this research,” says Leslie Hart ’03 (M.E.S.) as she directs her student team. “We’re trying to use this work to identify and raise awareness about the dangers of plastic pollution, not just because of its proven impact on wildlife, but because it can lead to complex issues for humans as well.”

Hart, who co-directs and teaches in the College’s public health program in the School of Health Sciences, has been studying dolphins since 2000 when she was an undergraduate student. After completing a master’s in marine biology at the College, she went on to earn a doctorate in epidemiology, specializing in skin disease in bottlenose dolphins.

For the work she’s currently doing – funded in part by a $400,000-plus grant from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences – she has assembled a unique team. Two of the students working with her are undergraduates; and the other two include a master’s candidate in marine biology and a Ph.D. candidate in environmental health sciences at the University of South Carolina.

At the moment, Hart and her team are dissecting these fish so that they can process their tissues to determine what kind of plastic particles the fish are carrying. These fish, delivered recently from Sarasota, Florida, are regularly eaten by the dolphins in that area, the same ones that Hart has been studying for over two decades.

“We recently published a paper where we were the first researchers to look at samples collected from live dolphins,” Hart says. “We suspected that they ingest plastics based on the phthalate metabolites that we detected in their urine. Phthalates are manmade chemical compounds that are used in the production of plastics, solvents and personal-care products. They’re not chemically bound to the products they’re added to, so when plastics break down in the environment, phthalates are easily released. Our study of the stomach contents of live dolphins revealed microplastics, so that leads us to the fish that they’re eating.”

For the students involved in this project, this work has far-reaching ramifications.

“There’s a benefit to using dolphins for this because they’re a charismatic mammal. Who doesn’t care about dolphins, right? But more importantly, we know that plastics shouldn’t be in the marine environment, and phthalates shouldn’t be found there either, yet we’re finding them,” says Miranda Dziobak, the Ph.D. candidate. “And we know that some of the fish that dolphins are eating are fish that humans also eat, so there’s a seafood safety aspect to this issue as well. What we’re finding – plastic and phthalate exposure in dolphins – means that humans are probably exposed in a similar way. And phthalates pose the risk of endocrine disruption, which changes the way our hormones are produced and function and that can affect development, reproduction and cognitive abilities. There are many potential impacts.”

PFAS fishData collected from fish taken from Sarasota Bay helps identify contaminants from plastic pollution getting into the food chain.

Maggie Knight, the master’s candidate, concurs: “I’m interested in how different environmental factors can change the chemistry of things, and how that potentially impacts both humans and animals. In particular, I’m interested in combining chemistry at a very, very small scale and the study of large marine mammals to make the world a better place for people, the oceans and the species that reside within them. Ultimately, this study is addressing that and plastic pollution, so it’s really worthwhile work.”

Fellow teammate Tita Curtain, a public health major, is also interested in how environments impact human health. That’s something she’d like to explore in the future with the background of a medical degree.

“What we’re working on goes way beyond the scope of dolphins and fish,” she says. “This is very much about us and our health. It involves seafood safety, yes, but also endocrine disruption. What we see in dolphins is likely parallel to what’s happening with us. So, this goes far beyond just what you see in this lab.”

And Eric Conger, another member of this team who is a marine biology major in the Honors College, says he’s grateful for such a meaningful experience as an undergraduate student.

“In most labs,” he explains, “you’re being trained to do something that doesn’t feel important until some time in the future. With this project, I feel like everything I’m doing, all the dissections, is actually contributing to something in the present.”

And that raises the question of where this research might lead. Hart is clear that this work currently pertains to what’s happening in a single geographic area – Sarasota Bay. Yet that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for expansion.

“Right now,” she says, “we’re focused on Sarasota Bay dolphins, but the potential exists for us to work with colleagues all over the world and sample different marine mammal populations. Doing that will enable us to look at the degree of contamination on a global basis, which will help us predict the risk of seafood safety issues for different coastal populations. And that would certainly make an important impact.”

Source: College of Charleston
KEYWORDS: environmental contaminants forever chemicals PFOS

Share This Story

Post a comment to this article

Report Abusive Comment

Manage My Account
  • eNewsletter
  • Online Registration
  • Manage My Preferences
  • Customer Service

More Videos

Related Articles

  • Water-PFAS

    Communities of color disproportionately exposed to PFAS pollution in drinking water

    See More
  • Oregon-Salem

    Oregon law removes plastic foam, PFAS from food containers

    See More
  • Biodegradation of Contaminants on CAC

    Results document the biodegradation of contaminants from colloidal activated carbon

    See More

Related Products

See More Products
  • bioremediation.jpg

    Bioremediation of Agricultural Soils

  • handbook of assisted.jpg

    Handbook of Assisted and Amendment-Enhanced Sustainable Remediation Technology

  • hazardous.jpg

    Hazardous Waste Site Soil Remediation Theory and Application of Innovative Technologies

See More Products

Events

View AllSubmit An Event
  • March 20, 2022

    Challenges of Employing Temporary Part Time Personnel to Secure a Major Sports Facility

    iSecurity is now available On-Demand! All content, exhibitors, webinars and Ask the Expert sessions from both the March and August shows are available for viewing through March 1, 2011.
View AllSubmit An Event

Related Directories

  • ePublishing

    It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
  • Security Magazine

    It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).
  • Test Listing 1

    Lorem Ipsum L1 is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s.
×

Get our eNewsletter delivered to your inbox!

Stay in the know on the latest environmental sciences & remediation news and information.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY

BNP Events

Privacy Policy | Code of Conduct | Scam Warning

Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved
Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing