I graduated from my BSc in Medical Pharmacology at Swansea university in 2021, with my dissertation being in the field of inhaled nanomaterial toxicity. During this, I was still a competitive swimmer, achieving a British National final in the 50m Butterfly at Glasgow in 2019, before the last year of the BSc was impacted by Covid-19, leading to a year of online tuition and minimal pool-time for training. Upon starting my MSc, I decided to retire from competing, as the training times were incompatible with the different workstyle, unlike during my BSc where lecture material could easily be accessed for flexibility.

This followed into my MSc by Research project, supervised by Prof. Martin Clift, Prof Shareen Doak and Dr Stephanie Wright, entitled Elucidating the Impact of Inhales Micro,- Nanoplastics from Surgical Face Masks In Vitro. This project partly stemmed from the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, anticipating the aftermath of mask misuse by the public and their unprecedented manufacture/wastage on human health, although these masks are also routinely used in occupational settings (publication of this is a WIP). It was necessary to be explicit in this project so that it could not be misinterpreted into fuelling socio-political beliefs during the pandemic.

Although I was based in Swansea for my MSc, this was a collaborative project with Dr Stephanie Wright and her environmental microplastic-focused team at Imperial College London, where the material production and some of the characterisation was conducted