Fay Couceiro

University of Portsmouth

Biography:

Fay is a Reader in Biogeochemistry and Environmental Pollution in the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying at the University of Portsmouth with 15+ years experience in pollution studies. The primary purpose of her research is to define the sources and fates of pollutants in the environment and develop interventions to prevent or mitigate their impact. She investigates many types of pollution including nutrients, metals, combustion products (from coal, wood, petrol and oil), plastic and organic pollutants. Fay has two main focuses at the moment, reduction of pollutants from wastewater treatment works, and microplastics in the environment.

Short description about presentation:

Microplastics are ubiquitous in our environments, soils and sediments, the air we breathe and in all our waters. In this presentation I will discuss what we know about microplastics in the aquatic environment and what we know about their impacts on environmental and human health. This will encompass wastewater effluents, freshwaters and marine waters, the main microplastics types found in each, and what we know about their ability to act a vectors. rnOnce microplastics are in environmental waters they are too difficult and expensive to recover so it is essential we start to think about the best places for interventions to be placed and what those interventions might look like. Some of these interventions and locations will be included in the presentation for discussion later.