Soft plastic fishing lures may be leaching into waterways: Sask. study
CTV
If you use soft plastic fishing lures when spending a day on the water, you might want to change it up.
If you use soft plastic fishing lures when spending a day on the water, you might want to change it up.
A study published this summer in the journal Science of the Total Environment suggests soft plastic lures are leaching water-soluble plastic additives.
“The research team, we are all quite avid anglers,” said Markus Brinkmann, associate professor in the school of Environment and Sustainability, and director of the Toxicology Centre at the University of Saskatchewan.
“When you use these kinds of materials in the environment, every now and then you snap one off. Every now and then, every other trip or so, you lose a lure. And, then the big question to us was, what happens with that material?”
The team selected 16 common soft plastic lures and performed chemical and bio-analytical tests for leaching of phthalates and hormone-mimicking chemicals.
“There are things in there that you would expect in plastics such as plasticizers that keep them soft and wiggly,” said Brinkmann. “But also silicone oils, these kinds of things that help them stay separated in the bag when you buy them.”
Brinkmann says 10 out of 16 lures leached phthalates, and bio-analytical testing showed the presence of xenoestrogens in one lure. Xenoestrogens are synthetic chemicals that mimic natural estrogen and can potentially bind to receptors in the body.
