In 2018 during an off-term in college, I conducted research under Dr. Chris Reddy and Dr. Colin Ward of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, MA.
After completing an extensive literature review and identifying relevant knowledge gaps, my team and I chose to explore the fate of polystyrene (PS) when exposed to sunlight and seawater.
I designed original experiments involving exposing uniform cuts of PS submerged in artificial seawater to different wavelengths of light for various amounts of time. We then measured the dissolved organic carbon and inorganic carbon present in the artificial seawater of each vial.
Our results showed that PS is completely photochemically oxidized into carbon dioxide and partially photochemically oxidized to dissolved organic carbon. The results challenge the existing assumption that PS lasts in our oceans for millennia, suggesting instead that PS remains in the ocean on the scale of decades or centuries. Our research was published in October 2019: “Sunlight Converts Polystyrene to Carbon Dioxide and Dissolved Organic Carbon”.
