In the programme Professor Jamie Woodward from the University of Manchester explained that a microplastic particle was a piece of plastic smaller than five millimetres in diameter and that the River Tame in east Manchester had the highest concentration recorded on any river bed.  Microplastics came into the river during flooding but were usually washed downstream.  So, according to Professor  Woodward, the presence of the microplastics, at high concentrations on the river bed, proved that they must be coming from being discharged into still waters, with water companies principally responsible.

The complainant argued reference in the discussion to a specific blast cleaning process would have led viewers to understand companies involved in this activity were primarily responsible for such pollution.  However the ECU noted this was just one example of the many sources of microplastic contamination Professor Woodward had found over many years.  Numerous shot blasting companies operating in the catchment area of the River Tame and a high level of tiny plastic microbeads had been found on the river bed for several decades.

Professor Woodward’s studies and separate research by the programme-makers had failed to come up with an alternative, plausible explanation for the presence of such microbeads beyond industrial processes, including shot blasting.  Viewers would not therefore have been left with a seriously misleading impression of who or what was responsible for the contamination of the river.  

Not Upheld