Inside the Laboratory: Portland State University’s Applied Coastal Ecology Laboratory and Oregon State University’s Ecotox and Environmental Stress Laboratory

In an earlier video interview, Elise Granek of Portland State University and Susanne Brander of Oregon State University, along with their colleague Summer Traylor, discussed their recent study quantifying microplastics (MPs) and anthropogenic particles (APs) in the edible tissues of black rockfish, lingcod, Chinook salmon, Pacific herring, Pacific lamprey, and pink shrimp. In our conversation with them, we also asked them about their laboratory groups and what projects their teams are working on (1,2).

We share those responses below.

Portland State University (PSU) Plaza in Downtown Portland, OR. PSU is home to the Applied Coastal Ecology Laboratory, lead by Elise Granek. | Image Credit: © Brandon Olafsson - stock.adobe.com

Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, home of the Ecotox and Environmental Stress Laboratory run by Susanne Brander. | Image Credit: © AG_photo - stock.adobe.com

Can you provide a brief snapshot of your laboratory group and the projects that you and your team is currently working on?

Granek: We have some collaborative projects between Dr. Brander's laboratory and mine. We’re working on a couple of projects right now. In terms of microplastics, we have a project looking at potential interventions to reduce microplastics entering freshwater and marine environments in coastal communities.

As part of this project, we're looking at the role of stormwater runoff as a source of microplastics and also looking at the role of washing machine filters and drier vents as sources of microplastics into wastewater and into the air. And so, one study is looking at how effective household interventions of washing machine filters on households can be for coastal communities and also how effective putting in storm drain inserts to trap microplastics before they make their way through out to the outfall pipes is.

That’s one study that we're doing on the coast. We also have another study that we're just starting on, which revolves around trying to understand the role of coastal tourism as a source of anthropogenic particles (APs) into the environment and what sorts of interventions would be most effective to reduce the impact and make coastal tourism more sustainable in terms of AP pollution.

We just had a paper accepted where we looked at where a graduate student in my laboratory looked at how microplastics and a pesticide individually, and in combination, may be affecting larval development of threatened sea star species (for example, Nepotia helianthoides). We're trying to understand the effects of contaminants on organisms, sampling what concentrations are in the environment of different contaminants, as well as interventional research to try and understand what are some strategies that can be implemented to address contamination.

Brander: Thanks, Elise, for describing some of the collaborative studies. I will say that collaborating with Dr. Granek's laboratory has been one of our main collaborations over the past, what, six years now? It takes a village to answer some of these really complicated questions, because it takes a lot of time and resources. Teaming up together is often the best approach. We're doing some work trying to better understand how fibers at different treatment stages impact the entire coastal food web.

I have a Ph.D. student who has formed a collaboration with a denim company, which is sending us textiles at different treatment stages because often you're sort of going blind when you're going to a fabric store or a craft store and picking up materials to make microfibers from for studies.

And so, now we know exactly which treatment stages each of these fibers are coming from, so she [my Ph.D. student] is looking at that in the prey of gray whales. I have another student who is working on tire particle toxicity. Tires are another big piece of the microplastics equation here, and exposure is happening near roads. Then, those particles, if they're small enough, are being transported quite some distance. My other Ph.D. student has been looking at the impacts of these particles on mostly fish.

We also are working with a startup in the United Kingdom that has invented this device you put on the back of a tire wheel. This device captures the particles coming off your wheel using static electricity, and we're getting some of those particles to use in exposures with fish.

We’re being a bit more realistic because you're looking at both the tire wear and what's coming off the road. We are also looking at bird poop from nests that were collected by the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and trying to see if this species of bird called the marbled murrelet is ingesting plastics from the fish that the parents bring back from the estuary.

We also have some collaborations with the state of California and the state of Oregon to look at biosolids, and we are trying to see what the microplastic accumulation is in those types of samples, which are less frequently studied. However, it's important to think about terrestrial sources because most of our plastics that are ending up in the ocean and freshwater are from land use.

And finally, we are also doing a little bit of work on pesticides and fire retardants too.

How do you and your group stay updated with advancements in analytical techniques and technologies?

Brander: As far as how we stay up to date with advancements, I will fully admit that I am a biologist who got into spectroscopy by accident when I started studying microplastics.

As a result, I rely heavily on colleagues. There’s a colleague, for example, who runs a website called Open Specy, which is an open-source database with all sorts of spectra that we use to better identify the particles that are showing up in our samples. So, we often spend a lot of time getting updates through that website and through those channels.

Can you discuss a recent innovation or development in spectroscopy and environmental analysis that you find particularly impactful or exciting?

Brander: In terms of developments that I find impactful, they recently came up with a way to attach a plate reader to an older Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) instrument, which allows for higher throughput of particle analysis. So that's been my favorite new development in that space.

References

1. Portland State University, Applied Costal Ecology Lab. PDX.edu. Available at: https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/acelab/home?authuser=0 (accessed 2025-01-27).
2. Oregon State University, Ecotox and Environmental Stress Lab. Brander Lab.net. Available at: https://branderlab.net/ (accessed 2025-01-27).