HEALTH COACH - Research on coastal pollution is on the cutting block of Trump: NPR

HEALTH COACH -

 Research on coastal pollution is on the cutting block of Trump: NPR  









UMCC Coastal Ecologist Lora Harris heads the research team working on a chemical footprint to spot nitrogen pollution from septic tanks.



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 Coastal Ecologist UMCES Lora Harris heads the research team working on a chemical footprint to spot nitrogen pollution from septic tanks. 


Chris Joyce / NPR





 For 51 years, a small federal program has paid scientists to keep US water courses healthy. It is called Sea Grant - part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - and the budget proposed by President Donald Trump for next year would eliminate it. 
 
 Sea Grant funds support more than 800 projects across the country. What would be lost if defended, let's start in a yard next to the Severn River in Maryland. This is my backyard. There is a white tube coming out of the ground. The ubiquitous icon of the suburbs - the septic tank - is underneath. 
 
 Many septic tanks decompose, often invisible, and what is found in polluting waters. Even tanks operating properly leak a little. When they do, some of the inland sewers are invisibly infiltrating downhill, in my case, the Severn River. Once the pollutants are in the river, it is really difficult To say where they came from. Is this the fertilizer? Livestock waste? From burning coal or gasoline? Wastewater treatment plants or ubiquitous septic fields in the suburbs of America? 
 
 There are some people who think they can spot part of the septic tanks from what are known as non-point sources of pollution - pollution from diffuse sources through snowmelt or runoff Rainfall, for example rather than, plants or sewage treatment plants. You might think of these trackers as "septic detectives". 
 
 "Septic detectives?" Ask Lora Harris. "I did not hear that." She prefers to consider herself as a coastal ecologist; She is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Environmental Science Center. But the day I met her in southern Maryland, she is chasing the septic tanks along a gulch behind a property development. She is looking for a particular type of pollution - nitrogen. 
 
 "Many things come from the toilets," she says, "a lot of things come from farms, and a lot of things fall from the sky through the burning of fossil fuels. 
 
 We cross the fog to find a small stream, just a few centimeters deep, flowing in the ravine. Empty beer cans and candy wrappers suggest that he might be acting out of a neighborhood hangout. Harris and his colleague Andrew Heyes begin to fill bottles with running water, taking care not to stir the sugar at the bottom. 
 
 Harris explains that nitrogen in a river or bay is well at the right price. But this is a nutrient for algae, and too much nitrogen leads to algae blooms. When these large algae blooms die, their decomposition sucks oxygen out of the water in a chemical reaction, creating low oxygen conditions that harm marine life - a dead zone 
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 In fact, excess nitrogen is the most important pollution problem in coastal waters, from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. And everyone blames somebody for that. 
 [Officials] "[Officials] are very interested in whether water quality problems are due to septic systems, farms or whether they are because of the problems that occur throughout Pennsylvania, "says Harris. 
 
 Therefore, his team is developing a chemical footprint that could determine nitrogen pollution from septic tanks. This would help local authorities to identify at least one source and work with communities to stop it. 







(From bottom to top) Chemist Michael Gonsior of the University of Maryland Environmental Science Center is working with researcher Melinda Forsyth and graduate student Katie Martin to collect and verify Samples of water near Chesapeake Bay, on Cocktown Creek. Verification by the team of environmental indicators such as salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature and pH.



Courtesy of University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science


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 (From bottom to top) Chemist Michael Gonsior of the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Sciences works with researcher Melinda Forsyth and graduate student Katie Martin to collect and verify samples from the University of Maryland, Water near Chesapeake Bay, on Cocktown Creek. The control of the team for environmental indicators such as salinity, dissolved oxygen, temperature and pH. 


Courtesy of University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science





 Harris spends a lot of time in waders, hopscotting throughout the Chesapeake Bay area to sample water, mainly near real estate developments. His research colleague, Andrew Heyes, explains that the septic footprint that works on targets more than nitrogen compounds. This is a cocktail of chemicals from homes - and the human body. 
 
 "Things like caffeine," says Heyes. "Some of the compounds you use in your soap, pharmaceuticals - everything you shave in the toilet or go through your body eventually cross the septic system." 
 
 With a box of water samples in the back of a jeep, Harris and Heyes head for the UMCES laboratory, which sits on a peninsula overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. The chemist Michael Gonsior oversees this part of the work. Gonsior studies what is going on in the water, up to the molecular level. "Complexity in water, even in natural systems, is absolutely amazing, extremely diverse," says Gonsior. "And I like complex mixes - that 's my thing." So it is not surprising that he spends his free time preparing beer. 
 
 Gonsior has identified approximately 15,000 compounds in septic waters. He shows me a paper board generated by a mass spectrometer. It displays different concentrations of compounds such as peaks and valleys. The plot seems completely different from a parcel of bay water or treated wastewater. This is the fingerprint, and Gonsior says it is good to remove septic waste from the range. "Because you really mean," OK, this flow here is surely impacted by the septics. "
 
 The team must always prove that their technique is iron-clad. A chance to do so depends on ongoing funding by Sea Grant.The Trump Administration plans to finance the financing by early 2018. So far, Congress keeps Sea Grant underway For at least the remainder of that fiscal year.