Bottled Water Can Contain Hundreds of Thousands of Previously Uncounted Tiny Plastic Bits

Using newly refined technology, a team lead by Columbia researchers have entered a whole new plastic world: the poorly known realm of nanoplastics, the spawn of microplastics that have broken down even further. For the first time, they counted and identified these minute particles in bottled water. The team found that on average, a liter contained some 240,000 detectable plastic fragments—10 to 100 times greater than previous estimates.

Nanoplastics are so tiny that, unlike microplastics, they can pass through intestines and lungs directly into the bloodstream and travel from there to organs including the heart and brain. Read the full story on this groundbreaking work.

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Students Spur Columbia Dining to Sign NYC Plant-Powered Challenge

Columbia Dining and the Office of Sustainability partnered with the Climate School’s Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development to offer a capstone project that explored ways of cutting Columbia’s food-related emissions and led to Columbia’s participation in the NYC Plant-Powered Carbon Challenge.

How Best to Educate People About Climate Change?

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The Climate School’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management and Lamont are developing sustainable education modules for young students.

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Bottled Water Can Contain Hundreds of Thousands of Previously Uncounted Tiny Plastic Bits

Why We Need Legal Frameworks for CO2 Removal Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and adjunct assistant professor at the Climate School, discusses legal frameworks to help ensure ocean-based carbon-removal techniques maximize benefits and minimize risks.

Sinking Seaweed for Sequestration Biological oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam, from the Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explains how sargassum seaweed might help reduce carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere to counteract climate change.

FOLLOW THE COLUMBIA CLIMATE SCHOOL

Why We Need Legal Frameworks for CO2 Removal

Romany Webb, deputy director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and adjunct assistant professor at the Climate School, discusses legal frameworks to help ensure ocean-based carbon-removal techniques maximize benefits and minimize risks.

Sinking Seaweed for Sequestration

Biological oceanographer Ajit Subramaniam, from the Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explains how sargassum seaweed might help reduce carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere to counteract climate change.