Lake Michigan (US)

Lake Michigan, with its sandy shores and boating along Illinois and Wisconsin, attracts summer visitors. Yet, it’s heavily polluted with up to 1,264,000 microplastic particles/km², dominated by PET and HDPE fibers from urban runoff, found in 85% of fish and tap water, threatening its food web [1][2][3].
 

Citations

[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c02896

[2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.0c06087

[5] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2023/12/microplastics-great-lakes-unsafe-wildlife

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Photo of Chicago, IL by Zander Betterton on Unsplash