Foaming at the Mouth: How eating floral foam microplastics harms animals’ health
Channel: The Royal Society of Victoria
Date: 20/08/2020

This study showed that floral foam microplastics can damage the health of aquatic animals. Some of this harm is due to the chemicals inside the microplastics: phenol leaching out of the microplastics causes deformities and death to aquatic animals. Additional harm is caused by the physical presence of foam microplastics, because invertebrates eat foam microplastics and this stresses their stomach cells. This study focused on floral foam, but its results can be applied to all phenol-formaldehyde microplastics, regardless of their source. Thus, this study helps us understand how and why this previously-unresearched family of plastic affects animals’ health. This work has reached florists and consumers through news outlets, floristry blogs and industry websites.Florists can now make informed choices about continuing to use foam in their business. Likewise, consumers are empowered to reduce  environmental impacts by choosing foam-free floral arrangements. Excitingly, as a result of this study, Melbourne Polytechnic has committed to teaching their students foam-free design techniques during their floristry course. This means that future Melbourne florists will have the skills to create more environmentally-friendly floral arrangements.

Charlene Trestrail is a final year PhD candidate with the School of Science at RMIT University. This presentation “Foaming at the Mouth: How eating floral foam microplastics harms animals’ health” comprises her entry to the Biological Sciences category of the Young Scientist Research Prizes in 2020, an annual competition conducted by the Royal Society of Victoria during National Science Week in Australia. Charlene was the First Prize winner in this category.

Due to Stage Four lockdown conditions in Victoria in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this presentation was necessarily filmed on 13 August, 2020 and presented to judges at the Royal Society of Victoria on the evening 19 August, 2020, both via video conference.