Local Monitoring Should Inform Local Solutions: Morphological Assemblages of Microplastics Are Similar within a Pathway, But Relative Total Concentrations Vary Regionally.

Pathways for microplastics to aquatic ecosystems include agricultural runoff, urban runoff, and treated or untreated wastewater. To better understand the importance of each pathway as a vector for microplastics into waterbodies and for mitigation, we sampled agricultural runoff, urban stormwater runoff, treated wastewater effluent, and the waterbodies downstream in four regions across North America: the Sacramento Delta, the Mississippi River, Lake Ontario, and Chesapeake Bay. The highest concentrations of microplastics in each pathway varied by region: agricultural runoff in the Sacramento Delta and Mississippi River, urban stormwater runoff in Lake Ontario, and treated wastewater effluent in Chesapeake Bay. Material types were diverse and not unique across pathways. However, a PERMANOVA found significant differences in morphological assemblages among pathways (p < 0.005), suggesting fibers as a signature of agricultural runoff and treated wastewater effluent and rubbery fragments as a signature of stormwater. Moreover, the relationship between watershed characteristics and particle concentrations varied across watersheds (e.g., with agricultural parameters only being important in the Sacramento Delta). Overall, our results suggest that local monitoring is essential to inform effective mitigation strategies and that assessing the assemblages of morphologies should be prioritized in monitoring programs to identify important pathways of contamination.

Sharing De-identified Medical Images Electronically for Research: A Survey of Patients' Opinion Regarding Data Management.

PURPOSE: Secondary usage of patient data has recently become of increasing interest for the development and application of computer analytic techniques. Strict oversight of these data is required and the individual patients themselves are integral to providing guidance. We sought to understand patients' attitudes to sharing their imaging data for research purposes. These images could provide a great wealth of information for researchers. METHODS: Patients from the Greater Toronto Area attending Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre for imaging (magnetic resonance imagining, computed tomography, or ultrasound) examination areas were invited to participate in an electronic survey. RESULTS: Of the 1083 patients who were approached (computed tomography 609, ultrasound 314, and magnetic resonance imaging 160), 798 (74%) agreed to take the survey. Overall median age was 60 (interquartile range = 18, Q1 = 52, Q3 = 70), 52% were women, 42% had a university degree, and 7% had no high school diploma. In terms of willingness to share de-identified medical images for research, 76% were willing (agreed and strongly agreed), while 7% refused. Most participants gave their family physicians (73%) and other physicians (57%) unconditional data access. Participants chose hospitals/research institutions to regulate electronic images databases (70%), 89% wanted safeguards against unauthorized access to their data, and over 70% wanted control over who will be permitted, for how long, and the ability to revoke that permission. CONCLUSIONS: Our study found that people are willing to share their clinically acquired de-identified medical images for research studies provided that they have control over permissions and duration of access.