CLEVELAND, Ohio – In 2014, Sherri Mason ventured out onto Lake Erie aboard the U.S. EPA’s Lake Guardian research vessel and came back with remarkable evidence of plastic floating in the water.

She made a return trip in July 2024 – hitting several of the same spots she did in 2014 – and found the number of tiny plastic bits on the surface had increased dramatically.

That surprised Mason, who now directs a freshwater research program at Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania, because she figured the results would be mixed – higher volumes in some areas and lower in others – given how lake conditions can affect the results.

But that wasn’t the case.

All five sites showed increases, she said, suggesting to her that the volume of plastic in the lake had indeed gone up, despite her hope

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