Professor takes sustainability deep dive

Chemistry professor Andreas Fath, known as the Swimming Professor, was 59 years old in August and September when he swam 673 miles along the Elbe River from the mountains in the Czech Republic to the river's mouth in Cuxhaven, Germany. 

The journey lasted 25 days and entailed eight hours of swimming each day. Along the way, he and his team took daily water samples, which they analyzed for pollutants and microplastics. This wasn’t his first foray into river swimming — it was his fourth. He started in 2014 by swimming the length of the Rhine. In 2017, he tackled the Tennessee River in the United States, and in 2022, he swam 1,677 miles along the Danube to the Black Sea.  

His Danube River swim gained publicity for the 9 miles of river in Belgrade, Serbia, that he didn’t swim because of pollution from wastewater discharges. “I skipped 15 kilometers because I didn’t want to commit suicide,” Fath said. 

His comments to the media drew attention to the lack of wastewater infrastructure in the Serbian capital and prompted calls for politicians to do something, he said. 

Fath’s goal is to raise awareness about water as a resource, the risks posed by microplastics from litter, and the importance of recycling and smart buying decisions. Arburg has sponsored Fath’s Elbe and Danube river swims,  underscoring the German injection molding machinery (IMM) manufacturer’s sustainability efforts. Related events have included demonstrations of an Arburg IMM running recycled materials.  

He recently talked to Bruce Geiselman, senior staff reporter for Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing.  

How did you get started with these swimming challenges? 

Fath: I started in 2014 with the Rhine River, a very important river in Germany. This was a frustration reaction because I had been very successful getting government grants when I worked in industry. But when I moved to doing university research, I wrote five applications in five years and got zero success — so I had no money for research.  

I not only wanted to teach, I wanted to do research into improving wastewater-treatment systems and protecting our waterways. I decided to combine research education with my swimming passion. I was still swimming long distances. I decided to swim the Rhine River. Sometimes to attract people you have to do some crazy things. I thought, if I could connect to society, to people, to industry along the Rhine River, maybe I could fund my research work and get the money for instruments like a mass spectrometer and other equipment needed to analyze water. It’s very expensive, and my university is not so rich. 

When I reached Speyer, Germany, my boss, the dean of the university, said I could stop because we had a company agree to buy us a mass spectrometer. But our goal wasn’t achieved, so I continued until I reached the North Sea, and at the end, we had so much publicity, we created a website and a documentary film. The university became a little more famous because of the press. 

People from 49 countries looked at this website, including an American professor from Sewanee [the University of the South], Dr. Martin Knoll, a friend of mine. He said, “Why don’t you swim the Tennessee River?”  

It was an idea of the Sewanee university in Tennessee and the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. The program was getting bigger and bigger. The Rhine River was the only river I chose for myself. The other rivers, the Tennessee, the Danube and the Elbe, were ideas from universities and NGOs doing environmental protection work. 

It’s good marketing. You reach more people with your story by swimming rivers and meeting people, the press and politicians than you do by writing scientific papers, which I have to do as a professor. It’s important to protect our environment, and I realized this combination of sport meets science and education is a very good combination to spread this important message. 

How did you get involved in educating the public about microplastics? 

Fath: When we started in 2014, we were the first group analyzing microplastics in the Rhine River, and then we did it in the Tennessee River, where we found 18,000 particles per cubic meter. This was, at that time, the highest concentration, and the press wrote that the Tennessee River was the most polluted in the world — more polluted than the Yangtze. But if you look closer at the details, it wasn’t the truth. It depends on the particle size you investigate. The smaller the particles are, the more you find, and that was the result. We looked at very small particles in the Tennessee River.  

You also need to calculate the discharge of the river. At that time, the Tennessee River discharge was about 2,000 cubic meters per second and the Yangtze was 31,000 cubic meters per second, so they have to multiply the discharge with the particle amount, and then the Yangtze has a lot more microplastics than the Tennessee River, but these are details. 

Aquariums, including the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute, have preserved fish from decades ago. You can look at how microplastic concentration increased over the years. If you look at a preserved fish from the year 1950, you won’t find microplastics because mass production starts in 1950. If you look at 1960, 1970 and 1990, the microplastic concentration goes up with the production scale of plastics, which is bad news because it means as more plastics are produced, you find more in the environment. 

We have only recycled 9 percent of all 8.3 billion [metric] tons we produced from 1950 until 2015. If you look at the production curve until 2050, we will have produced 34 billion [metric] tons of plastic. If you look outside on the shores and rivers and in the stomachs of the aquatic creatures, we find a lot of microplastic. If we don’t turn the wheel and increase the amount of recycling from 9 percent to up to 100 percent, our environment will be dead. That’s the bad story.  

I’m not against plastic at all. That’s the point. Plastic is not a bad material. It’s a perfect material, as long as it stays in the loop of use. If it enters the environment, this material will be a problem for us. [And it is much less energy-intensive to produce than metal and ceramic. Thermoplastics can be mechanically or chemically recycled].  

Have you been looking into solutions for dealing with ocean plastics? 

Fath: I’m working on this, and I will give you an example. We take fishing nets that are lost in our oceans — this is the main part of plastic pollution in our oceans. We take this polyamide and reproduce in a patented way microplastics. 

Why do we do this? Because microplastic particles have a good absorption capacity. If you look in our rivers and streams, you find a lot of pollutants like hormones, pesticides, X-ray contrast agents, and they all adhere very well to plastics. These microplastics can absorb pollutants [that otherwise could contaminate fish and aquatic life and work their way into the food chain].  

You may ask, what do you do with this? Do you combust it? No. You can reuse it by replacing the water with ethanol. [When the filter is washed with ethanol,] the ethanol takes the pollutant from the plastic particle again, and then they can reuse the particles as an absorber material to clean water. It’s a filter material.

[Three of Fath’s former students formed a start-up company, PolymerActive GmbH, that has commercialized the process of recycling fishing nets into filter materials. One current use for the products is filtration of swimming pool water. However, Fath believes the technology could be used for wastewater-treatment plant filtration as an alternative to activated carbon. Said Fath: “They started first in the garage, and now they have a production area of more than 500 square meters. Maybe it's like the story of Microsoft. They started in the garage as well.”] 

What are the risks of microplastics in water? 

Fath: Microplastic is a Trojan horse that collects pollutants and takes them into our seafood. Some fish like microplastic more than their natural food because it smells good and it has a nice appearance, and they eat it.  

The microplastic particles go through the fish. They will not be digested and are released. But the pollutants stay in the fish. 

Another problem is the additives, softeners, UV stabilizers, flame retardants that are in plastics. The additives will stay in my tissues. This causes problems. 

How do you prepare for these long-distance swims? 

Fath: I try to do cardio sports every day. I have a rowing machine. I'm not happy if I haven't done at least an hour in the water or outside the water. I have done this since I was 8 years old. 

When a river swim comes along, I start to do a little bit more. At the beginning, you’re tired but happy because you know you can’t do anything else. During the process, your body adapts. At the end, after eight weeks swimming in the Danube, I felt 25. I was strong and fit. Then the problem begins with how you feel at home after 8 hours of sitting in front of the computer doing interviews. That’s hard. 

Just the facts 

WHO IS HE: Andreas Fath, AKA the Swimming Professor, chemistry professor at Furtwangen University, Germany, and founder of H20rg, a nonprofit environmental education organization.  

EDUCATION: Doctorate in chemistry, Heidelburg University, Germany, 1996. 

YEAR OF FIRST RIVER SWIM: 2014