{"id":45283,"date":"2026-09-24T15:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/?p=45283"},"modified":"2026-09-24T15:40:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T19:40:34","slug":"ric-and-epscor-investigator-leads-surf-students-to-engage-local-communities-about-microplastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/2026\/09\/24\/ric-and-epscor-investigator-leads-surf-students-to-engage-local-communities-about-microplastics\/","title":{"rendered":"RIC and EPSCoR investigator leads SURF students to engage local communities about microplastics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"type-intro fullwidth wp-block-paragraph\">Daniel Hewins, Judith LaRose and Elizabeth Turbi Padilla worked with the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council educating youth on plastics in Rhode Island waterways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Microplastics permeate our environment. We inhale them in the air, ingest them in our food and absorb them through our skin. They travel through our bloodstream and settle throughout our body. They\u2019re in our bones and brain, semen and placenta, breast milk and meconium (a newborn\u2019s first stool).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reality is that plastics don\u2019t degrade, they don\u2019t disappear, they just fragment into tiny pieces until you can\u2019t see them. They become microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics that can enter our cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This summer RIC Professor of Biology Daniel Hewins is working with a social science team made up of two undergraduate students and the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council (WRWC) to learn from and educate the public about the impact of microplastics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>This piece was originally published by RIC News on June 16, 2026.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/our.ric.edu\/news-events\/news\/plastic-everywhere-including-you\">Read the full story!<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microplastics permeate our environment. We inhale them in the air, ingest them in our food and absorb them through our skin. They travel through our bloodstream and settle throughout our body. They\u2019re in our bones and brain, semen and placenta, breast milk and meconium (a newborn\u2019s first stool).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1994,"featured_media":45285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[978,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-ric","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1994"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45286,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45283\/revisions\/45286"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/rinsfepscor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}