UD awarded $425,000 for pollution studies

Herbert Allen (left), director of UD’s Center for the Study of Metals in the Environment, explains the workings of an optical emission spectrometer to U.S. Sen. Tom Carper.
2:53 p.m., Feb. 23, 2005--The Center for the Study of Metals in the Environment at the University of Delaware has received $425,000 from the federal government to study the behavior of metals and the risks they pose in the environment, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), announced at UD on Tuesday, Feb. 22.

The center is a multi-university consortium of scientists and engineers, which was established to assist the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in furthering the understanding of processes affecting the fate of metals in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and the biological effects of metals in those systems.

“We are about to make a critical decision on the Clean Air Act, [and] we depend on good analysis and good science from the EPA and other entities to make sound decisions,” Carper said. “The work that is done here will make it possible to safely eat the fish that are in our rivers, lakes and streams. The work that is going on here will provide for a better quality of life and reduce health-care costs on the long run, not only for the people of Delaware but for the whole country.”

Carper said that he has worked in partnership with others in Delaware’s congressional delegation--U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and U.S. Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.)--to ensure continued federal funding of the center. More than $3 million in federal funds has been allocated to the center since 2001.

Herbert Allen, director of the center, said the results of the studies enable government, industry and the research community to work together to develop standards for sound research. In addition to hosting six of the nine ongoing research projects, UD provides the administrative and programs leadership. The center includes scientists and engineers from Manhattan College in New York, University of Wyoming, University of Missouri at Rolla and Colorado School of Mines.

“It is very critical that we get this kind of support,” Allen said of the federal funds. “These are applied programs. We publish our findings in the best of journals, but they are really focused on developing real, practical tools for real-world problems.”

Allen explained that the results of studying metals in the environment would help provide answers to an ongoing debate in Europe about how much galvanized steel can safely be used for roofing, electric power grids and roadside guardrails.

“Our primary work output is better tools, better models for understanding the environmental behavior of metals. That allows us to predict how much of a metal will eventually become toxic, how much of a metal will migrate to the environment,” Allen said. “If we don’t have good predictive capability, society pays for it.”

Allen said the center’s work eventually aims to also provide better, more precise cleanup criteria for federal Superfund sites--vast, mostly abandoned hazardous waste sites, such as a former zinc-smelting facility in Palmertown, Pa.

“We can’t remediate every site; there is not enough money and technology to do that, but how do we determine how clean is clean?” Allen said.

Article by Martin Mbugua
Photo by Duane Perry

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