Microplastics Beneath the Ice: Arafin Presents Arctic Findings at the 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting
Congratulations to Ph.D. student Md Shah Nawaz Arafin, who presented “Microplastics Beneath the Ice: First Detection at the Geographic North Pole and Basin-Scale Polymer Transport across the Arctic Ocean” at the 2026 AIChE Annual Meeting, held November 8 to 12 at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The talk shared results from Arctic Ocean water samples collected during a September 2025 transpolar expedition from Svalbard to Nome, Alaska. The team sampled 20 stations spanning 64°N to 90°N, including the geographic North Pole. Microplastics were found at every station, including the North Pole itself, which represents the first reported surface microplastic measurement at 90°N.
Arafin also discussed how different polymer types are distributed across the Arctic basin and what those patterns suggest about the pathways that carry plastic pollution into the central Arctic Ocean, one of the most remote and least studied marine environments on Earth.
Authors
Md Shah Nawaz Arafin; U.H. Pena, PhD; L. Feltner, PhD; Olya Keen, PhD; R.B. Tipton, PhD
This work is a collaboration between the Performance Materials Laboratory at UNC Charlotte, the UNC Charlotte Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Science in the Wild, and the Sustainable Seas Institute. Great job, Arafin!
