Well, you have to go a little way back when plastics were discovered and when plastics came into being as be all and end all of our life pretty much, you know, we store a lot of things and plastics at that time plastics were mostly generated from certain chemicals that were polymerized and these polymeric molecules were would not degrade a whole lot. So that's why some of the older plastics remain for a long time.

We have done some preliminary experiments, which is going to be published soon, it's under review. So what I can tell you is what we know in general, we have taken some of the common plastic materials that we that are out there and expose them to intense UV light and try to see how they would disperse themselves.

And they do become micro plastics. Now, once it becomes hydrophilic, that's where material can actually get into the environment and also get into the human system itself.

Now, the transport of these materials into the environment, whether into the water stream, into the biota and also into the air, that's the final time and that's what our aim is, that's why I got into this research in the first place.

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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast, now part of the Finding Genius Foundation.

I have Kaliat Baasadaj, he's the Charles and the Hilda Roddy Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at Louisiana State University.

We're going to talk about plastic waste in the environment and wastewater, probably cross over into micro nano plastics as well.

So Professor Baasadaj, thank you for coming.

Glad to be able to share some of my research.

Yeah, if you would, tell me about your research. What are you working on right now?

You know, you know, my research area is pretty much in working in the area of environmental transport and transformation of chemicals, mainly having to do with what happens when some of the chemicals are released into either the air, water, soil and all the environmental media in general.

And my current research is mostly on understanding the behavior of micro plastics and how they are generated and what happens to it in the environment.

I've interviewed a number of scientists on micro plastics. Do you know anyone in the field that's trying to model how fast various plastics break down?

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