Valparaiso University Professor Receives $300,000 Grant to Research Micro and Nano-plastics

Julie Peller, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Valparaiso University, and her team of collaborators and student researchers have been named the recipients of nearly $500,000 National Science Foundation Grant to continue their work in micro and nanoplastics research. The three-year grant is a continuation of a previous grant that Peller was awarded in 2020.

“I was very happy to find out we’d been named the recipients,” Peller said. “We’re finding this research to be very interesting. The more we work on it, the more questions arise.”

While plastic does not chemically decompose over time, it does shatter into smaller and smaller pieces — eventually into microscopic particles now being found in water, food, and human bodies. Peller and her team are using radiation chemistry to artificially age samples of microplastics, in order to uncover how they may change further over time.

The actual impact of microplastics on nature and human health are largely unknown, but given the dramatic increase of worldwide plastic production in the past decade, Peller’s work could help uncover potential hazards these pollutants represent — hazards that the most vulnerable may already be facing.

“We all have these in our bodies,” Peller said. “My concern is that, given how much we’ve been manufacturing in the last decade, today’s children are exposed to these materials to a far greater extent than other generations.”

The NSF grant will allow Peller’s research to continue operating at its 2020 level, providing a budget for equipment purchases, communicating the team’s findings through papers and conferences, and support for the year-round team of student researchers assisting with the project.