That fleece you're wearing is starting to pill and may be polluting Lake Winnipeg

In the midst of a zebra mussel invasion, algae-choked Lake Winnipeg just can't catch a break.

New research suggests the world's 11th largest freshwater basin is taking in a surprising amountof microplastic on par with the Great Lakes and it could be coming off the backs of nature-lovers.

Researchers found Lake Winnipeg haslevels of microplasticsin its waters comparable to Lake Erie, the Great Lake along Ontario's southern borderthat is suffering from an acute case of plastic contamination.

It was a surprising, and potentiallytroubling, finding for the team of scientists, who published their research in the journalEnvironmental Pollutionin February.

"We're worried about it because of the potential effects [microplastics]can have on our ecosystems," saidMike Rennie, a senior author on the study andresearch fellow with the Winnipeg-based International Institute forSustainable Development.

• Microplastics at 'alarming levels' in Canadian lakes and rivers
• Microplastics found in supermarket fish, shellfish

More surprising still was the kind ofmicroplasticsthey found in Lake Winnipeg.

Polar fleece fibres

The majority ofmicroplasticscome in bead form from a range of commercial health and beauty products, as well as industrial waste. The small particlesareless than five millimetres in size,Renniesays,or roughly the size of a match head.

In some cases, the plastics leach into water tables after being broken down in the washing machine and sent through sewagetreatment plants.

The particles are dangerous to a range of wildlife species. Tiny zooplankton are capable of unwittingly gobbling down the plastic, as are birds and fish.

Researchers measuredmicroplasticsamples takenacross Lake Winnipegbetween 2014 and 2016 using the same methods as similar studies of the Laurentian Great Lakes.

But when the team got back to the lab, they noticed somethingmarkedly different from the Lake Erie samples: more than 80 per cent ofmicroplastic from Lake Winnipeg came not from the typical beaded form, but frommicrofibreslike those found inpolar fleece clothing. No microbeadsappeared in three years of sampling.

Fleece clothes can shed 'a lot' of microplastic

So in what is possibly a tragic stroke of irony, the snugglyfleece that keeps cottagers and outdoorsy folks warm might also be poisoning the ecosystem.

"Basically, if you've got an article of clothing that's got polyethylene or polypropylene these synthetic articles will often shed fibres,"Renniesaid.

"Some ofthese clothing manufactures have been instrumental in helping fund and conduct some of the research to show just how much they can shed, and it's quite a lot."

Outdoor specialty retailer Mountain Equipment Co-Op is actively looking for solutions to the problem. It is studying microplastics in garments at its very own product testing lab in Vancouver.

While Lake Erie serves as a helpful comparison,Lake Winnipeg could have bigger issues. Lake Erie had a greater density ofplastic in its waters than at least two other Great Lakes Lake Huron and Lake Superior but Lake Winnipeg hada greater overall volume of plastic than all three. Lake Erie's watershed is also one-tenth the size of Lake Winnipeg's, but is surrounded by a population nearly twice as big.

Not only is the population much greater in number,thepeople are denselycrammed into a smaller space along LakeErie'sshores than in the more vast expanses around Lake Winnipeg, where communities are more spread out.

Data gap

Microplasticshave been documentedin marine areas around the world, but there is a data gapwhen it comes to freshwater ecosystemsin Canada and abroad, Rennie said.

The issue requires more study before anything can be said conclusively about where all the plastic in Lake Winnipegis coming from, but it could have something to do with the rivers that feed into the lake.

"Fewer municipalities feeding wastewater to Lake Winnipeg compared to Lake Erie suggest that(a) municipalities in the Lake Winnipeg watershed could be generating more microplastics than those around Lake Erie, and that (b) long-range transport of microplastics is facilitated on the surfaces of freshwater rivers," Rennieand the researchers state in the study.

The Saskatchewan River runs through communities in Saskatchewan and Alberta, where a total of 2.2 million people live, before iteventually spills into the northern basin of Lake Winnipeg. About a million people live along theWinnipeg and Red rivers, the authors state, which also feed into the lake.

A lot of laundry

That's a lot of potential fleece-wearersdoing a lot of laundry, and a lot of soapy water travelling through sewage treatment plants and eventually back into the environment.

Previous research findings have raised concerns about what happens when microplastics inch up through the food chain into the bellies of fish.

"When these move into fish there's a concern they could be transporting contaminants, like a vector for moving contaminants from the water into fishes," Rennie said.

A Winnipeg graduate studentis now studying fish in the Red River to see whether they show fleecy signs of mircoplastic contamination.