Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts blog

In a time of cuts to science funding, Colin Mackechnie and colleagues at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK, look at the role that volunteers can play in environmental monitoring.

They review available literature on the use of ‘citizen science’ for environmental monitoring and highlight important issues surrounding the use of volunteers – such as limited technical expertise or access to equipment, incomplete monitoring due to geographical restraints or lack of interest in certain areas of science and difficulties coordinating and exchanging information.

It’s not all doom and gloom though – the authors also give examples of successful volunteer monitoring work and conclude that ‘the current engagement of volunteers in UK monitoring provides valuable data’.

Interested?  Why not take a look on a interesting community solution to the big funding problem:

The role of ‘Big Society’ in monitoring the state of the natural environment
Colin Mackechnie, Lindsay Maskell, Lisa Norton and David Roy
J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 2687-2691
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10615E

The Environment is a messy, disordered, inherently inhomogeneous place hardly conducive to conducting precise scientific studies.  Which is unfortunate  when we need to know detailed information about how chemicals interact with our surroundings.  Mercury is a good example, a serious pollutant, but it has so many possible reactions in the environment that studying field samples can give even the most methodical researcher a headache.

In this hot paper Frank Wania et al. at the University of Toronto have sort to reduce the chaos by creating a highly controlled experimental system for studying the fate of mercury in snow.  They create, age and melt snow contaminated with mercury and with a variety of compositions to allow a detailed mechanistic study of the fate of the pollutant.

Read their detailed study, which includes a candid discussion of its potential and limitations, here.  It’s free to access for the next 4 weeks:

Mercury fate in ageing and melting snow: Development and testing of a controlled laboratory system
Erin Mann, Torsten Meyer, Carl P. J. Mitchell and Frank Wania
J. Environ. Monit., 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10297D

Researchers from the State University of New York, the University of California and the New York Department of Health are trying to understand the effects of long term trace exposure to metal contaminants on human reproductive health.  In this hot paper, they have sought to identify which non-essential trace elements found, for example, in food and drinking water might be used as biomarkers to assess associations between exposure and fertility treatment endpoints.

Michael S. Bloom and colleagues studied a group of men and women currently undergoing IVF treatments and have identified 11 metals, including arsenic, copper and cadmium,  that are appropriate background exposure biomarkers.  For full details of the study download the article – it’s free to access for the next four weeks:

Biomonitoring for exposure to multiple trace elements via analysis of urine from participants in the Study of Metals and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SMART)
Keewan Kim, Amy J. Steuerwald, Patrick J. Parsons, Victor Y. Fujimoto, Richard W. Browne and Michael S. Bloom
J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 2413-2419
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10341E

E. coli and enterococci are commonly used to indicate water quality and associated health risks in the US, but current methods to determine the densities of these bacteria in samples rely on cell culture methods that can take up to 23 hours to complete.

In this hot paper Samuel Dorevitch, University of Illinois, and colleagues have evaluated the potential of qPCR for determining levels of the bacteria.  The speed at which qPCR is completed means that samples can be turned around within a day – which would be invaluable for beach managers to reduce exposure of the public to waterborne pathogens.

For full details of this extensive study download the article – it’s currently free to access for 4 weeks:

A comparison of rapid and conventional measures of indicator bacteria as predictors of waterborne protozoan pathogen presence and density
Samuel Dorevitch, Mary Doi, Fu-Chih Hsu, King-Teh Lin, Jennifer D. Roberts, Li C. Liu, Ross Gladding, Ember Vannoy, Hong Li, Margit Javor and Peter A. Scheff
J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 2427-2435
DOI: 10.1039/C1EM10379B