"I am a scientist. I'm not in a position to answer that question but I'd be happy to refer you to an appropriate spokesperson."

Oh boy. Now the oil sands.  It isn't surprising that this is a source of contamination, so I'm not sure why this needs to be hushed up. Not letting scientists talk about the results of their work is suspicious - I can see if they talk about policy, but not letting them talk about science????

PAH contamination from the Oil Sands

Snow contamination from the Oil Sands

Today, on Thanksgiving, I have new hope for becoming a better cook.  Cooking is chemistry!  (Thanks Marcia for cluing me into this :)  )

New Science Adventure

I am headed out of the country for a bit.  I've been invited to participate in the American Alpine Club sponsored Climber/Scientist program.  We'll be in the Cordillera Blanco mountain range in central Peru doing science.  I'll be collecting water samples to later analyze for metal contamination.  With some of the world's largest metal mines near these mountains, there is a fairly unique situation for non-volatile metals of anthropogenic origin being transported to high altitude systems.  This year is pilot scale and we hope to continue the work over the next few years.

I'll post periodic updates on my blog.  The American Alpine Club has some information at this page.

If you are on Facebook, you can like The American Climber Science Program and see updates from everyone.

Cheers,  Ruth

Field trip to Hanford and PNNL

We had a great field trip this week with several of the students from the Science and Management of Contaminated Sites (SMoCS) class.  It was ten hours round trip, 2 vans, and 1 night with tours of the PNNL labs and Hanford.  We saw Dr. Nik Qafoku's labs where different waste forms are investigated.  The waste forms are the different ways that waste can be stored.  Vitrification, for example, essentially turns the waste into glass - that is one waste form. We also saw the 300 Area IFRC Field Test Site.  This is a site with uranium contamination in the ground water that PNNL scientists are studying.  On the second day, we toured Hanford and saw Reactor B, the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (another name for the landfill where all of the low level radioactive waste is going), the vitrification plant, and a pump and treat plant. Really neat to see the science behind all of this! 

Student Contributions to Wikipedia

This year, the final project in my Aquatic Toxicology class was a Wikipedia article.  The students wrote on many topics, listed below.  Feel free to go in and help improve them, but I think they turned out very nice and I am happy they were able to contribute!

Aquatic Toxicology
Bioconcentration Factor
Biotic Ligand Model
Effects Range Low and Effects Range Median
Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic Substances
Pollution Induced Community Tolerance

What is happening in Canada?

Wow.  I am still in shock by the extent of damage from the Harper administration.   I am finding the news on this spotty and hard to find, but the best source of recent events is Peter Ross's Opinion piece in Environmental Health News called Silent Summer.  The short of it is that Canada has fired all of their scientists in the Contaminants Research Program at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and is dismantling this program.  This is the program that investigates accumulated contaminants in marine mammals.  Odds are good that any scientific reports you've heard about flame retardants, PCBs, dioxins, etc. in the whales of British Columbia and Puget Sound came from Peter Ross's work. 

The loss of this scientific program and world class researchers is an enormous loss to the scientific community; their work was well designed and provided essential knowledge for protection of our marine mammals.  Perhaps as bad, this is only the tip of the iceberg for the Canadian and US environment (effects to the US are because we are downstream of Canada so we'll be affected by pollution crossing the international boundary).  Indications are that Harper's government is changing the Fisheries Act so that regulations on polluters into Canadian waters will be more "lax" (non-existent is a better description in what looks like many cases). 

Are our memories so short that we don't remember river's on fire?  Massive fish kills?  Water that people wouldn't swim in?  All of this because of unregulated pollution and not that long ago (early 1970's).  The environmental regulations like the Clean Water Act in the US and the Fisheries Act in Canada have been largely responsible for what we all take for granted now - clean water.  I haven't even started on what we know about humans eating fish from polluted waters... that is if they survive this war on the Canadian environment.

As a nation who is benefiting from this?  This is bad bad bad Canada.

Unbelievable.

Pacific Northwest SETAC

The regional SETAC meeting was in Vancouver, BC April 26-28.  As always, it was well attended.  The WWU students were present with about 19 current undergrads and several students from previous years (I counted 5 generations of students from 2003 on, when I started at WWU).

I had three student groups presenting posters of their senior theses.  Their topics were Ag nanoparticle toxicity to Vibrio fischeri, snow chemistry from the Mt. Baker wilderness near snow mobile trails, and the effects of temperature on Ag, Cr, and Cu toxicity to Lemna turionifera.  This last poster won 3rd place for undergrads!

Time-Lapse of Ocean Currents Looks Like a Living Van Gogh Painting

 One of my current students sent this - it is pretty neat...

The Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center created this beautiful animation called Perpetual Ocean which visualizes the ocean's surface currents over a 30-month period between June 2005 and December 2007.


Watch here:
http://gizmodo.com/5896376/time+lapse-of-ocean-currents-looks-like-a-living-van-gogh-painting

Final SMoCS presentation for Winter quarter

On March 15,

Dioxins... Uh-Oh

The sordid history of industry, government, and the public... throw in a chemical group like dioxins and it makes for interesting reading... yes, there is a novel in here somewhere. 

Understanding risk of contaminants to humans is a difficult task.  Since toxicologists can't ethically conduct controlled experiments on humans, the agencies evaluating the risk have to rely on many different types of studies - for example, epidemiological studies from accidental exposures to humans (as in Vietnam), laboratory studies with animals (in vivo), and laboratory studies without animals (ex vivo).  Some of the studies support toxicity, some don't.  The level at which effects are seen depends on what the effect is and what the test organism is... it just isn't easy. Period.  Most of the work, however, does support that dioxins are quite bad for humans and one specific dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD) has been called one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.  Dioxins can be lethal, they can cause a skin condition called chloracne, they can cause reproductive damage and birth effects, they can weaken the immune system, and they can cause cancer (ATSDR, 1998), but again, whether these effects occur and at what exposure level they occur depends on what animal is being tested and how the exposure occurs.

And so, the EPA is charged with determining how much of a toxic substance like dioxins can be in our food without causing an increased risk of cancer and non-cancer effects to humans.  This was last completed in the 1980s.  Reassessments of dioxins risks, based on new science since the last assessment has been on-going.  The short story is that there was a reassessment completed in 2003 and evaluated by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).  Three years later, the NAS provided comments to the EPA on that reassessment.  In 2010, the EPA released a draft reassessment incorporating comments from the NAS.  They also decided in 2010 to separate cancer risk from non-cancer risk and had a goal of releasing the final Dioxin Reassessment for non-cancer risk by the end of January, 2012, which hasn't happened yet.  According to Bottemiller (2012), the allowable level for non-cancer effects is expected to be 0.7 picograms per kilogram of body weight per day.  The problem... industry, such as the American Chemical Council isn't happy about this level (see Bottemiller for a great summary of all of this).  In the meantime, we are all exposed to dioxins from the meats, dairy products, and fish that we eat. 

As of now, I suppose we watch what happens and make comments whenever the public gets a chance... this is a story to pay attention to.


Additional Information:

• Hamilton. A Chemical Conundrum: How Dangerous is Dioxin. NPR Morning Edition: Dec 28, 2010.
• World Health Organization. Dioxins and Their Effects on Human Health. Fact sheet N°225: May 2010. 
• Tomson. EPA Misses Deadline on Dioxin Guidelines. The New York Times: Feb 1, 2012.
• Williams. EPA misses deadline to issue dioxin health assessment. NPR Environment: Feb 2, 2012.
• Bottemiller. EPA Misses Key Deadline for Dioxin Assessment. Food Safety News: Feb 3, 2012.

Mussel Watch: Citizen Science in Bellingham

Three students were out last night helping Whatcom County Public Works collect mussels for Mussel Watch, a national sampling program of NOAA. The students collected native mussels from the Squalicum (harbor) marina jetty. These samples and all others collected from the more than 300 sites in the United States will be analyzed for chemical contaminants in the tissue of the mussels. Once the analysis is complete, the data will be used to look at both temporal and spatial contamination in coastal waters and the Great Lakes.

Left to right: Jackson Barnes, Rachelle Combs, and Julie Fix.

Presentation from Maul Foster and Alongi

Several people from the Bellingham, Portland, and Vancouver (WA) offices of Maul Foster and Alongi had a special seminar for SMoCS students today.  The seminar used examples of cleanup sites the company has worked on near Portland.  They showed examples of dredging and a sediment cap being placed.   They showed examples of models used for decisions as to how deep a sand layer should be for a cap, what expected contaminant concentrations are on a site, and a TCE and degradates groundwater plume.  They also showed an a strategy for cleaning up groundwater contamination with a permeable reactive barriers.

This presentation was a great supporting element to the Fate and Transport and SMoCS classes.  Thanks to all who attended and presented!

Site Visit to the ESY Site

About 32 students went to the Port of Everett today to visit our site (the Everett Shipyard) for the SMoCS courses. We met representatives of the Port, who is responsible for the cleanup activities of the site. They presented background information about the Port, the site, and MTCA and then took us on a tour of the site. We saw the marine railway where boats were removed from the water and the areas where maintenance on the boats was conducted. The contaminated material from sand blasting was still present on site, which was interesting for the students to see. Our tour guides also showed up the new boat storage area, where all surface run-off is collected in underground tanks and sent to the municipal water treatment facility, essentially eliminating non-point source run-off from the site.

New SMoCS courses at Huxley

The new Science and Management of Contaminated Sites (SMoCS) courses started today. Almost 40 students from Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies and Journalism are enrolled. The students are in for a great quarter as we learn about the Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA), which is the Washington State regulations through which some contaminated sites are cleaned up. We are focusing on the Everett Shipyard (ESY) site this quarter.` I'll have occasional posts about the course here.