Researchers at ASU’s Center for Environmental Health Engineering have been exploring the impacts of many common materials, chemicals and substances on humans and their environments. Among the more recent noteworthy revelations resulting from those endeavors led by the center’s director, Fulton Schools Professor Rolf Halden, with help from doctoral student Charles Rolsky, is the damage being done by the disposal of contact lenses into sink drains and toilets. Those lenses — more than billion of them by Rolsky’s estimate — are adding significantly to pollution from the plastics in treated wastewater finding their way into rivers, streams and oceans. See the August 19 post below for a look at more of the many news media reports of these research findings.

See also: Tonnes of contact lenses flushed down the toilet, Insight magazine (Australia), September 11