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ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY

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Impact/Purpose:

The overall goals of the task are to apply NERL's core capability in advanced chemical science and technology for maximum benefit in estimating exposures of ecosystems and humans to chemical stressors and to identify emerging pollution concerns, in particular long-range airborne transport of contaminants. This task comprises several subtasks, each with individual objectives:

Subtask 1: screen exposures of National Park PRIMENet ecosystems to chemical stressors, identifying indications of exposure requiring further evaluation, and use these samples evaluate new analytical methods as replacements for standard methods in future assessments of ecosystem contaminant exposures.

Subtask 2: evaluate a new mercury analytical approach with superior performance on complex solid matrices such as biological tissues, and apply the approach to estimating exposure of ecosystems and humans to mercury.

Subtask 3: determine distribution patterns of chemical contaminants in the southern Sierra Nevada Range of California, investigate topographic and weather factors that may influence the distributions, and determine if a correlation exists between contaminant distributions and extirpation patterns of the mountain yellow-legged frog.

Subtask 4: provide analytical methods to measure a number of inorganic and organic arsenic species in a variety of environmental matrices, elucidate the environmental transformations undergone by organoarsenic animal-feed additives, and determine if the potential exists for substantially increased exposure of humans and aquatic organisms to arsenic.

Description:

Environmental chemistry is applied to estimating the exposure of ecosystems and humans to various chemical environmental stressors. Among the stressors of concern are mercury, pesticides, and arsenic. Advanced analytical chemistry techniques are used to measure these stressors in multiple environmental media. The research improves analytical tools for measuring chemical stressors, uses these tools to evaluate stressor concentrations in environmental samples (including biological tissues), and tests hypotheses regarding transport and fate of chemical stressors in the environment. Environmental measurements include analyses of human dietary samples and human hair obtained from native Alaskans for mercury (NIEHS approval for human-subject research M1493-02 ), measurement of pesticide levels in remote alpine aquatic ecosystems, and arsenic speciation to evaluate the fate of organoarsenic veterinary antibiotics. Airborne transport of contaminants on regional and global scales is investigated. In particular, exposure by atmospheric deposition of remote alpine ecosystems to semivolatile contaminants, and the factors that control the exposure are studied.

This task has four subtasks:

Screen chemical contamination in fish and other media from surface water resources in selected national parks as part of the Park Research and Intensive Monitoring of Ecosystems Network (PRIMENet) [PI: Ed Heithmar]

Evaluate, modify, or develop methodology to measure mercury in various biological matrices, provide data for biological samples, and foster collaborations to apply the methodology to address significant scientific or public concerns [PI: Tom Hinners]

Determine the factors affecting distribution of contaminants in ecosystems in the mountainous western U.S., [PIs: Ed Heithmar and David Bradford]

Apply arsenic speciation methods to studying the environmental fate of organoarsenical animal feed additives [PI: Georges-Marie Momplaisir]

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT
Record ID: 56170