Spring Break
URI researcher uses new study to monitor health of Narragansett Bay
Jeff Sullivan
Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: News
10/02/08 - Many waterfront urban areas contain potentially harmful chemicals left over from years of industrial dumping, and now there might be a way to find out where they come from and in what concentrations they appear.
Rainer Lohmann, a University of Rhode Island chemical oceanographer and researcher, is studying the effectiveness of sheets of light density polyethylene at detecting environmentally unsound compounds.
For his award-winning paper published last year in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, Lohmann was given a $300,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology at the University of New Hampshire.
In his paper, he showed how sheets of this common and cheap material could be used to find virtually any compound that dissolves in water. Polyethylene is the same material some plastic trash bags and painters' drop sheets are made of, and any substance that dissolves in water is absorbed into the material.
By pre-treating the sheets with certain chemicals, depending on the contaminant being searched for, density levels and patterns of contamination can then be extrapolated from the sheets relatively quickly.
This is not a new concept; the method has been used before in detecting other industrial chemicals, such as PCBs, dioxins and oil components in water. But the difference Lohmann demonstrated in his paper was that they are also useful in finding other relatively overlooked chemicals.
The main chemicals he mentioned were alkylphenols in certain cleaning products that can cause reproductive impairments to marine life, a disinfectant called triclosan found in many surface cleaners that when exposed to sunlight can form a toxic dioxin and flame-retardant chemicals.
The flame-retardant chemicals are especially dangerous, because like PCBs and certain dioxins, bioaccumulation occurs, during which the chemicals permanently accumulate in the fat cells of whatever organism they enter and are absorbed all the way up the food chain, possibly to humans. A fully formed dioxin is believed to work in the same way, according to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site.
Rainer Lohmann, a University of Rhode Island chemical oceanographer and researcher, is studying the effectiveness of sheets of light density polyethylene at detecting environmentally unsound compounds.
For his award-winning paper published last year in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, Lohmann was given a $300,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology at the University of New Hampshire.
In his paper, he showed how sheets of this common and cheap material could be used to find virtually any compound that dissolves in water. Polyethylene is the same material some plastic trash bags and painters' drop sheets are made of, and any substance that dissolves in water is absorbed into the material.
By pre-treating the sheets with certain chemicals, depending on the contaminant being searched for, density levels and patterns of contamination can then be extrapolated from the sheets relatively quickly.
This is not a new concept; the method has been used before in detecting other industrial chemicals, such as PCBs, dioxins and oil components in water. But the difference Lohmann demonstrated in his paper was that they are also useful in finding other relatively overlooked chemicals.
The main chemicals he mentioned were alkylphenols in certain cleaning products that can cause reproductive impairments to marine life, a disinfectant called triclosan found in many surface cleaners that when exposed to sunlight can form a toxic dioxin and flame-retardant chemicals.
The flame-retardant chemicals are especially dangerous, because like PCBs and certain dioxins, bioaccumulation occurs, during which the chemicals permanently accumulate in the fat cells of whatever organism they enter and are absorbed all the way up the food chain, possibly to humans. A fully formed dioxin is believed to work in the same way, according to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site.
