Microplas­tics – Ori­gin and Impact

We no longer can imag­ine our lives with­out plas­tics. Despite its ubiq­ui­ty, not much is known about the decom­po­si­tion of plas­tics or their impact on human lives and the envi­ron­ment. After small plas­tic par­ti­cles were detect­ed in marine life, ques­tions arose about their ori­gins and their impact on ani­mals and what we can expect when these par­ti­cles enter our bod­ies. The Spe­cial Research Depart­ment 1357 at Bayreuth Uni­ver­si­ty will ini­ti­ate a com­pre­hen­sive research pro­gram to address these questions.

The lec­tur­er will dis­cuss the decom­po­si­tion of macroplas­tics into micro- or nanoplas­tics as well as the inter­ac­tion of the addi­tives con­tained there­in and the envi­ron­ment. A spe­cial focus will be on frac­ture-mechan­i­cal meth­ods which are used to accel­er­ate the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the decom­po­si­tion kinet­ics in a vari­ety of environments.

The lec­tur­er
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Volk­er Alt­städt has held the Chair for Poly­mer Mate­ri­als at Bayreuth Uni­ver­si­ty since 2000 and is the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Neue Mate­ri­alien Bayreuth GmbH.

ATTEND­ING THE LEC­TURE IS FREE OF CHARGE but sub­ject to reg­is­tra­tion at Katrin Stark