Pacific Northwest SETAC

Last month, a group of SMoCS and my lab research students went to Spokane for the regional SETAC conference.   It is always a nice experience to see a scientific conference for the first time through the eyes of students.  They start to understand what scientific professionals do, what this world is like...  This year was no exception.

There was a mining tour of the Coeur D'Alene valley on Thursday (I had to miss it because of teaching obligations, which I was SO bummed about), but the students were excited about what they had seen (they had made an agreement not to tell me how cool it was, knowing I would be disappointed that I missed it, but they were bubbling over with excitement and within 5 minutes of my arrival had already spilled the beans).  One of the students wrote a summary of the trip, which will be in the Spring/Summer 2013 regional newsletter. 

The lab research students did a great job with an oral presentation and 2 poster presentations.  One of the undergraduate students won "Best Undergraduate Poster" for her work on lichens as bioindicators of air pollution near train tracks.  (This student also just won an Outstanding poster award at the WWU Scholar's Week poster fair!). 

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!

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.

Fine Particulate Matter and Health Effects

On November 3 and 4, Chad Weldy gave a few presentations on campus. Chad is a PhD student in the Dept. of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences at the School of Public Health, University of Washington. He graduated with his BS from Huxley in 2007 with an emphasis in Environmental Toxicology; I was glad to welcome him back.

Chad had a busy scheduled. He lectured in my Toxicology 1 class and was the Huxley Seminar Speaker for the week. He was also interviewed on, The Joe Show, a local radio show on KGMI . The second part of the show has Chad's interview.

All of the talks were related to his PhD work on the human health effects of a specific type of air pollution, fine particulate matter (PM2.5). He focused on the impacts of diesel exhaust (a source of PM2.5) on cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular related mortality. With the proposed coal terminal in north Whatcom County and a potential increase in diesel trains as a result, the talk was very quite relevant to current issues here. What was interesting to me was that studies support increased myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) when PM2.5 was high, which can occur when there are weather inversions and sources of PM2.5 (for example, from wood stoves or diesel exhaust). Even more interesting is that a recent epidemiological study found an increased incidence of heart attacks during air pollution episodes, but the authors found a decrease in heart attacks following the episode. They concluded that the air pollution may have shifted the timing of the heart attacks forward in people who would have had heart attacks despite the air pollution episode. As Chad stated, though, this is of debate in the scientific community right now. What doesn't appear to be of debate is that older people are more at risk of heart attacks during acute exposures to PM2.5 from air pollution.

The Huxley Seminar was recorded and is available on Youtube here. Great work Chad!

Additional Resources:

• Dockery et al. 1993. An Association between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities. New England Journal of Medicine: 329:1753-1759
• Katsouyanni et al. 2001. Confounding and Effect Modification in the Short- Term Effects of Ambient Particles on Total Mortality: Results from 29 European Cities within the APHEA2 Project. Epidemiology:12(5).
  
• Tonne et al. 2009. Traffic particles and occurrence of acute myocardial infarction: a case–control analysis. Occup. Environ. Med.:66:797–804
• Bhaskaran et al. 2009. Effects of air pollution on the incidence of myocardial
  infarction. Heart: 95:1746–1759.

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/11/03/2256496/wwu-to-host-air-pollution-lecture.html#storylink=cpy