When Heather Hulton VanTassel went looking for plastic pellets in the Ohio River in 2021, she was simply trying to establish a baseline level of contamination. A new plastics facility was being constructed nearby, and she wanted to be able to compare the prevalence of pellets — known as “nurdles” — before and after it went into operation. The “before” number would probably be low, she thought.

What she and her co-workers found, however, exceeded her expectations. “We were really shocked at the numbers we were seeing,” she told Grist.

VanTassel is the executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a nonprofit that protects the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers in southwestern Pennsylvania. As she and her team went about testing the river four years ago, hundreds of nurdles were com

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