When a person spends 40 hours per week studying, looking at, and talking about water, they almost have to become an environmentalist – especially when the subject matter almost always swings to water pollution. Even if they didn’t start out being concerned about our environment. Here at IX Water, we have learned about drought, floods, PFAS and PFOS, BTEX, and microplastics. So imagine our excitement when we learned about a young Irish student, Fionn Ferreira, who has created a way to trap microplastics and remove them from water.

His method is to use a magnetized liquid called ferrofluid to bind to microplastics, and then remove them with magnets. According to eco.org, “The process retains nearly all of the magnetic liquid, which can be reused, while removing microplastics. Importantly, Ferreira’s microplastic removal process can be safely used on drinking water…”

Enter Robert Downey Jr. and others, who created The FootPrint Coalition, intended to promote sustainable resources. They helped Fionn prototype and improve his method, which is now capable of capturing more than 85% of microplastics in water and remove them. Fionn has also been working with the University of Texas to scale his model to work in water treatment facilities around the world. Given that the average person consumes about the weight of a nickel’s worth of microplastics, possibly resulting in endocrine disruption, insulin resistance, and cancer, it seems obvious that reducing our intake would be beneficial.

https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/european-inventor-award/meet-the-finalists/fionn-ferreira

https://www.footprintcoalition.com/

https://www.undp.org/kosovo/blog/microplastics-human-health-how-much-do-they-harm-us#:~:text=Different%20chemicals%20can%20leach%20from,decreased%20reproductive%20health%2C%20and%20cancer.