With a glass jar in hand, Faran Savitz, zero waste advocate at PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center, carefully leaned over the water at Spring Creek Park near State College on Tuesday, looking for a good spot.
“So what we do is we try and find access to creeks and streams like this one or rivers as well, where we can get to the water. So right here, we have a nice little spot," Savitz said before filling the jar with water, sloshing it around, dumping it out and repeating three times and then filling the jar with water.
It was part of a demonstration on how the nonprofit environmental organization PennEnvironment collected and tested water samples for microplastics at 15 sites in the Chesapeake Bay watershed between April 2024 and October 2026. Those findings — they found microplastics at all of the sites — and recommendations were released in a new report "Microplastics in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed."
Lucy Rowe, clean water associate with PennEnvironment, said they tested for four types of microplastics, including fragments and fibers.
“Microplastics in our water, in our food, in our air pose a risk to our health and the health of wildlife everywhere," she said.
PennEnvironment is calling for policies at the local, state and national level. Those could include banning single-use plastic bags and containers, and restricting the release of plastic pellets, which are made for manufacturing plastics but can end up in waterways.
Savitz said this is his fourth project testing for microplastics.
“I may not be surprised to find plastic everywhere at this point, but it's certainly still shocking to see how much plastic there is, the different types, the fact that we're finding multiple categories of microplastic almost everywhere we look," he said.
John Zaktansky, the riverkeeper and executive director of the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, said historically the river was the lifeblood of communities, and still is.
"Most of our communities still get their drinking water from the river or a tributary to the river," he said. "Many of our local farmers rely on the rich soil near waterways for crops and for livestock. So overall, the food we eat, the water we drink, all of it touches our river, creeks and streams in one way or another."
He said the study should be a "wake up call."
