Greenversations

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection.Previous Science Wednesdays.

By Aaron Ferster

I’m a big fan of those “Top Ten” lists that come out at the end of every year. I like to track how many of my favorite movie critic’s Top Ten List of Films I’ve caught during the year (so far, I’ve seen most of them—and I’ve still got a couple of weeks to go before New Year’s Eve). The synopses included in the lists of Top Ten Best Novels of the year let me feel like I’m in the know about the latest literature, even though I’ve clearly spent more time at the cinema than at the bookstore.

But this year the most impressive “list” I’ve come across came out last week, when EPA and its partners from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced the compounds to be tested as part of the collaborative Tox21 research program over the next couple of years

Only the list is slightly more robust than ten—it’s a 10,000 compound library.

The library contains chemicals covering a wide variety of classifications, including chemicals found in industrial processes, consumer products, and food additives, as well as human and veterinary drugs. A large number of reference compounds are also included to give researchers access to different toxicological or disease endpoints, duplicate compounds for evaluating test methods, and a small set of chemical mixtures for a pilot study.

“The Tox21 partnership integrates revolutionary advances in molecular biology, chemistry, and computer science to quickly and cost-effectively screen the thousands of chemicals in use today,” said Paul Anastas, Ph.D., the Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The compounds will be tested with a high-speed, robotic testing system that was unveiled early this year—the subject of a previous blog post here on Science Wednesday.  That means the tests will continue nearly nonstop, 24-7 until all the compounds have been analyzed.

Results of the tests will provide information useful for evaluating if any of the 10,000 chemicals have the potential to disrupt processes in the human body to an extent that would lead to adverse health effects. I’ll be sure to blog about those results once they start rolling in. But in the meantime, I’ll be at the movies.

About the author: Aaron Ferster is the senior science writer for EPA’s Office of Research and Development, and the editor of Science Wednesday.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in Greenversations are those of the author. They do not reflect EPA policy, endorsement, or action, and EPA does not verify the accuracy or science of the contents of the blog.

Each week we write about the science behind environmental protection. Previous Science Wednesdays.

By Leslie Gillespie-Marthaler

As someone who has spent time on military installations and has a great respect for the Army community, I’m thrilled to be helping the Army work toward “Net Zero” and sustainability.

I’ve lived on installations myself, and know firsthand that they are very much like small cities. With thousands of soldiers, civilians and families on base, they face many of the same challenges that cities around the country are facing, including increased energy costs, limited water resources and aging infrastructure. For example, last year Army installations used 41.8 billion gallons of potable water at a cost of $67.4 million.

To help combat these challenges, EPA and the Department of the Army have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to advance the Army’s Net Zero Initiative.

The goal of the Initiative is to ensure that Army installations only consume as much energy and water as they produce and minimize waste sent to landfills. EPA scientists and engineers will provide their skills and expertise to bring cutting-edge research assistance to the effort.

I was happy to be on hand this week when Paul Anastas, PhD, Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development and Science Advisor at EPA, signed the MOU with the Honorable Katherine Hammack, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and the Environment.

“The Net Zero partnership was inspired by the Army’s ability to demonstrate true leadership in sustainability,” said Anastas. “The Army Installations are a test bed for new technologies that can solve more than one problem and can be replicated or scaled for communities throughout the nation.”

“We look forward to working with Army experts to develop tools and technologies to address some of our more pressing economic and environmental challenges,” he added.

“Through a whole-of-government approach to sustainability, the Army’s Net Zero Initiative increases the Army’s ability to be successful today and into the future. Our collaboration with EPA’s Office of Research and Development brings leading-edge research assistance together to advance both our institutions’ goals for increased resource efficiency and balanced resource use,” said Hammack.

Anastas emphasized how the Army’s and EPA’s goals are intricately interconnected: “You are protecting the nation. We are helping make the nation worth protecting,” he said.

I feel it’s both a privilege and an honor to help incredible Army communities and their neighbors achieve “Net Zero.”

About the author: A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Leslie Gillespie-Marthaler, is currently a senior advisor in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in Greenversations are those of the author. They do not reflect EPA policy, endorsement, or action, and EPA does not verify the accuracy or science of the contents of the blog.

Improving the quality of life for people, especially those disproportionately impacted by disease, the environment, poverty or other life circumstances is one of the basic goals I always work to accomplish with my social, academic and professional pursuits. Along with this goal, I have tried to choose activities that are in line with the principles that my parents taught. These include the importance of faith, importance of family, hard work, honesty, manners, sharing, respecting all people, remembering where you come from and that you are standing on someone’s shoulders with each upward step. In addition, they instilled in me the rule to first do no harm, never taking anything or anyone for granted, and take time to enjoy life and all you do with it. All of these ideals and goals have led me down many interesting paths including my current path in EPA’s Indoor Environments Division, better known as IED. My work here not only has the potential to help improve the quality of life for people, including those disproportionately impacted, but also depends on many of the principles I was taught as a child.

IED is a non-regulatory part of EPA with the mission to improve indoor environmental quality and its impact on health and well-being of indoor occupants. Many times, the people we serve are not aware that their problems might stem from things in the indoors or they don’t know how to address or mitigate issues or how to help themselves live healthier lives indoors. Others need help in building or modifying buildings to protect from potential indoor air quality problems in the future. Since we do not regulate and cannot force by legal statutes people to change, it is important that we not only have strong credible science behind our messages, but that we use all of the basic principles I was taught by my parents to motivate change.

Combining my academic training in chemistry, mathematics, and public health with my interest in theater and the arts, as part of the science team in IED, I get a chance to not only review and analyze the science but identify where there are gaps in what we know. I also get to work on projects that impact everyday consumers just like me and my family. I get to be on stage when I provide outreach through public speaking and with the help of some very talented artists and public relation specialist create public documents to spread our messages. One of my primary areas of focus is pollutants and sources with a special emphasis on consumer products and building materials. I really enjoy this work because I am getting to research and address issues (all the techie stuff I love) but also input into the awareness and understanding of the everyday person like myself and my family. I often get to talk to teachers like the ones who work in my son’s school or elderly people like my mother, or homeowners like my husband and I who just want to understand and know how to make good choices for our family’s air quality and health.

People spend as much as 90 percent of their time indoors where some contaminant levels may be much higher than they are outdoors. All of us can be impacted by what we breathe inside of our homes, cars and workspaces. It can be very simple in most cases to control our exposure through source control and ventilation with fresh outdoor air, but most of us do not know enough about the potential problems or how to mitigate effectively. I encourage you to discover more about your indoor environment, what you might be breathing, and how you can limit any potential harm from indoor air quality concerns by visiting EPA’s Indoor Environments Web site.

About the author: Laureen Burton works as a chemist and toxicologist in EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air, Indoor Environments Division. Since 1997, she has worked not only to advance the science behind indoor air quality, but also to increase the public’s understanding of the indoor environment and how it can impact the health and comfort of people.

The name sounds like it is all about pendulums and inclined planes, but it is really about radiation protection. The most entertaining story about the origin of the job description “health physicist” is that it came about during the “Manhattan Project” when scientists needed to protect themselves from the radioactive materials they used. According to the story, the term, “health physicist” was chosen to be an intentionally confusing description to disguise the work on the atomic bomb.

Over the last 60 years, health physics has developed into an important and complex scientific discipline and profession. There are entire university degree programs devoted to it as well as professional-level certification. In keeping with the confusing name, health physicists have many confusing terms and units such as rem, rad, roentgen, effective dose equivalent, and committed dose, just to name a few. If that weren’t confusing enough, health physicists also use the international system of units (kind of like the metric system).

Today many health physicists work in nuclear power plants, hospitals and industries, all places where radiation is used. Some also work at EPA, since EPA is the primary Federal agency charged with protecting the public from the harmful effects of radiation. Many of them became involved in health physics because they were interested in the science of radiation. I once had a manager tell me that health physicists were unique at EPA because they were the only ones who “thought their pollutant was cool.”

I think the hardest job health physicists have is explaining radiation to the public and to other scientists at the EPA. We know a lot about radiation, but for low level radiation exposure, there is a lot that we need to assume and estimate, and many areas where the science is not clear. I usually start out my discussions about radiation by reminding people that this is a radioactive world.

Did you know that the reason the Earth’s core is still molten after 4.5 billion years is that the long-lived radioactive decay in the core keeps it hot? Without that molten core, Earth would not have a magnetic field, and without a magnetic field the solar wind would have blown away our atmosphere long ago (like Mars). And of course without an atmosphere, Earth would be a lifeless rock. So in a way, radioactivity is the reason there is life on Earth. Health physicists think that is cool–just ask one.

About the Author: Richard Poeton is a health physicist. He started his career with EPA while studying for his MS in radiological science at Oregon State University. Richard is professionally certified by the American Board of Health Physics, and has more than 30 years of experience in radiation protection. He has worked in the EPA Region 10 Seattle office since 1991 and is currently the radiation program manager there.

Although I have been surrounded by radiation my entire life, it wasn’t until 2003, when I began my doctorate work, that I entered the “radiation world.” Since that time I have learned so much about radiation and realize there is much more to learn. I have also come to recognize a variety of challenges that exist in the radiation world.

Despite being surrounded by naturally occurring radiation, very few people really understand it. This is just one challenge we, radiation professionals, need to address. Other challenges include understanding the unique behavior of each radioactive element (or radionuclide), the various areas of study within the field of radiation, the multiple uses of radiation in our society, the fear of radiation, and the decreasing workforce knowledgeable in the field of radiation.

Some areas of radiation work include understanding: the fate and transport of radionuclides (how they behave in water, soil, air); biological effects of radiation (effects on human health); how to prepare, prevent and respond to radiation emergencies; how to set protective regulatory limits; and how to use radiation as a benefit to society (medicine, energy…).

Each radionuclide exhibits unique biological, chemical, and physical properties. What does this mean? It means that different radionuclides behave differently in various media (soil, water, air) as well as in the human body. Radionuclides also have unique radiological properties, such as the type of radioactive decay (alpha, beta, gamma) or the length of time they will be around before being transformed into a stable (non radioactive) element. Fully understanding the world of radiation means understanding all of these things for multiple radionuclides; what a challenge!

Another challenge is addressing the fear of radiation while improving the public’s general knowledge of radiation. EPA is meeting this challenge through various radiation education products like RadTown USA.

It will be increasingly difficult to increase public knowledge without the right staff. The number of radiation professionals is not growing at the rate it should be. More students need to be encouraged to not only study STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas, but also to specialize in one of the diverse fields of radiation.

As an Engineer at EPA, I look forward to meeting all of these challenges head on, learning more about radiation and working to get the word out about radiation, educating people about the role of radiation in their daily lives, and encouraging them to join the “radiation world.”

About the Author: Dr. Angelique D. Diaz joined EPA in June of 2008 after completing her Ph.D., where she studied the behavior of plutonium in the environment. Dr. Diaz is an Environmental Engineer working at EPA’s Region 8 office in Denver, CO, where she works on a variety of radiological-related activities, including regulating radon emissions from uranium mines and mills.

When people hear the word “radiation” or “radioactive” they generally get worried. Radiation is something that people can’t see, smell, taste, hear or feel, but is real which makes it very scary.

At my work at EPA, I deal with addressing technical issues associated with radiation sites from cradle to grave, performing human health risk assessments, providing technical support to emergency responses, participating in the development of national guidance, participating in counterterrorism emergency response exercises associated with Radiological Dispersal Devices (dirty bombs), such as the EMPIRE 09 exercise in Albany a couple of months ago, and participating in public meetings to address radiation technical issues. I couldn’t do any of this if we didn’t have devices and instruments that can “sense” and measure radiation.

We use state of the art technologies for radiation site investigations and emergency responses. Some of the instruments are stored within our region. We can get larger specialized equipment from our EPA colleagues in Radiation and Indoor Environments National Laboratory located in Las Vegas, the National Air and Radiation Environmental Laboratory in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Environmental Response Team and National Decontamination Team located in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Such technologies include everything from handheld devices for surface and subsurface investigations, to larger monitoring vehicles like the RIENL Scanner Van and Environmental Radiation Gamma Scanner (ERGS), to NDT’s airplane, the Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology (ASPECT). These instruments provide data that help us answer important questions, like those on the amount of radiation, the type of radiation and the location of the radioactive material.

Recently the ERGS, which measures gamma radiation several feet below the ground surface, was utilized to survey approximately 200 acres of land. This provided the project with both cost and time savings. The ASPECT was recently deployed to support the EMPIRE Exercise and also conducted gamma radiation flyover survey over two radiation sites in my area.

Explaining radiation is sometimes challenging, yet essential for public awareness. At times, the challenge is encountered because some of the audience is working off assumptions and has their mind set before coming to the meeting as opposed to others who are willing to listen and learn. Regardless of the different types of audience, I believe that we need to reach out further in educating the public in radiation because it is hard to understand something that requires special instruments to detect.

About the Author: Nidal Azzam joined the EPA Region 2 New York office in 2003 as a senior health physicist. Nidal provides technical support on radioactively contaminated sites, radiation emergency responses, and on the development of multi-agency guidance to protect the public and the environment from the harmful effects of ionizing radiation.

I started out as a radiation “novice” and had to be trained; therefore I understand the difficulty in explaining radiation concepts. I always try to make explanations as simple and as accurate as possible given the complexity of and mythology behind radiation.

As a regional member of EPA’s Radiological Emergency Response Team, my role as a Regional Liaison is to enhance coordination and communication between my region and the rest of EPA’s responders during a radiological emergency. One of my responsibilities will be to help staff members who are not familiar with radiation concepts to understand them and to communicate them to the public. You might think that since many of our people are scientists or engineers, that they would already understand radiation. That’s not the case. Often, radiation is just as mysterious to many of our staff as it is to the public. That’s where we come in.

Unfortunately, most people just don’t know much about radiation. Our movies and comic books, which present radiation as being able to create monsters or superheroes or to be deadly in even the smallest amounts, have created a great misunderstanding about what it is and what it isn’t.

We had an exercise recently in which we pretended that a “dirty bomb” spread radioactivity over an area. One part of the exercise had people saying that they had “radiation sickness” (i.e. they had been exposed to an amount of radiation which would make them sick to their stomachs). I had to explain to our staff that this was impossible. The amount of radiation we had determined to have been released could not have created that effect – it was just too small. However, people could be so worried about getting sick that they could indeed have made themselves sick. My statements were greeted skeptically until I showed them the tables describing that radiation sickness symptoms occur at radiation levels thousands of times greater than had been released in our pretend situation.

There are many other concepts people need to understand as well, such as: being exposed to radiation doesn’t make you or your possessions radioactive forever; you can remove radioactive contamination by washing with soap and water; and that being exposed to radiation won’t turn you into a monster or a superhero. I think that Spiderman is everyone’s favorite character who got his powers from radiation. I know that I would like his powers, but I’m afraid of heights so I could only swing from short buildings!

About the Author: Shelly Rosenblum started out in Marine Biology and Engineering. The engineering took him to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard on San Francisco Bay where he was trained in principles of radiation, radiation protection and measurement. Shelly works in Region 9, where he began his work speaking to the public about radon and developing the Radionuclide NESHAP program.

I love to climb up on roofs. I must have been a mountain climber in a past life. But, since I live in Chicago (where the land is about as horizontal as a thin crust pepperoni pizza), rooftops are about the only thing that can satisfy my need for altitude. However, this addiction to heights is a good thing, because one of my jobs is to get radiation monitors installed on rooftops around the Great Lakes.

EPA’s national radiation monitoring network is called RadNet. RadNet monitors are near-real-time radiation monitors providing baseline data on background (a.k.a. normal) levels of radiation in the environment. In the event of a radiological incident, EPA will initiate RadNet’s emergency mode, allowing us to get a lot of data very quickly. We also have monitors that can be deployed to the immediate vicinity of the incident to assess the spread of contamination.

When we are finished installing monitors, RadNet will provide coverage for more than 70% of the geographic area in the United States. EPA has specific criteria for the placement of these monitors. In urban areas we often have to place these monitors on roof tops. I have had the pleasure of climbing roofs in Chicago, Toledo, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit, Des Plaines, Bay City, and Champaign. But I’m not finished yet. I still have a few more roofs to scale.

I do want to say that – next to getting up on the tops of buildings – the best thing about the job is meeting all the great people who operate the monitors. State, local and tribal government volunteers operate most of these monitors. Without the great work and dedication of all our volunteer operators, the program simply wouldn’t work.

I remember standing on a roof in Cincinnati one very hot day. Heat waves were visibly shimmering off the black tar and my shoes stuck with every step. I don’t know how warm it gets in Hades (not yet, any way), but that Cincinnati roof couldn’t have been more than a few degrees cooler. I was working with folks from the health department and our EPA laboratory to get the RadNet monitor installed and operating. I looked out over the City of Cincinnati, wiped the sweat from my eyes and thought to myself, “I have just about the best job on Earth.”

About the Author: Jack Barnette is a senior scientist with EPA’s Region 5, Air and Radiation Division. Jack is a former Federal and State (Illinois) On Scene Coordinator. He currently is the preparedness coordinator for the Air and Radiation Division, and serves on the Response Support Corps and on the Regional Incident Coordination Team.

About the author: Jeanne Voorhees is an environmental scientist at EPA in Boston, Massachusetts. She began working at EPA (1997) helping to protect and restore water quality in rivers and streams, and continues this with her focus now on doing her Dream Job in wetlands.

I was raised on Long Island (New York) and enjoyed hours playing in woods behind our home, never realizing the muck I tromped through or the hummocks of tussock sedge I hopped upon were considered part of a wetland. I just knew I loved watching waterbugs, catching turtles, frogs, and salamanders, and getting muddy. I even enjoyed peering through a microscope looking at smaller forms of life found in muddy ponds and remember the first Paramicieum I saw. It was that moment, 38 years ago, I dreamed of becoming a “scientist.” Now I’m at EPA doing my Dream Job helping to protect and understand the biology, ecology and health of our wetlands in New England. What better job could I possibly ask for?

As a child I didn’t know the wetlands behind my parent’s house were acting like a sponge to absorb water that would have otherwise flooded our basement. I didn’t know wetlands help clean the ponds and rivers we swam and fished in. Although I didn’t know these and other wetland functions, I did know they were home to unique and beautiful plants and animals worth protecting. I encourage you to discover more about wetlands and the benefits they serve at EPA’s wetlands website.

I am privileged to work with wetland scientists across New England exploring such questions as, “How do we know a wetland is healthy?” We may monitor it using computer models with maps, algae (one celled organisms), soils, water chemistry, and other measures to help answer our questions. We might find a wetland is missing bugs and plants that belong in a healthy wetland, and then begin identifying the potential source(s) of the problem so it can be restored to a healthier system. The source could be a failing septic system, or polluted runoff from a parking lot. This is only one issue that monitoring wetlands can help identify.

I encourage you to visit a wetland this week, maybe it’s in your own backyard, to discover its unique qualities and report your findings here. Ask yourself, “What do I see, hear and smell? Is this wetland healthy and how do I know?”

About the author: Michael Scozzafava has been with EPA since 2004 and the Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds since 2006. He is project lead for the 2011 National Wetland Condition Assessment and chair of the National Wetlands Monitoring and Assessment Work Group (NWMAWG).

How healthy are the nation’s wetlands? Existing data sources make it almost impossible to answer this question with any confidence. The most recent Water Quality Report to Congress provided data for only 1.5% of wetlands nationwide. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Wetlands Status and Trends Reports provide invaluable information on the amount of wetlands (quantity), but are not designed to assess overall wetland health (quality).

It is vitally important that we answer this fundamental question to effectively plan wetland protection and restoration efforts. Currently, we don’t know if we’re using resources wisely or focusing work in areas that need the most help. We can’t identify the most common wetland threats and develop strategies to reduce those threats. The U.S. FWS documented that the country is gaining 32,000 wetland acres each year, but the data suggests we may be increasing the number of low quality wetlands that provide only one service (like storing excess rain water) and losing high quality wetlands that provide a range of services. So, although we’re increasing the total number of wetlands, we’re probably losing natural filtration for our drinking water, protection from coastal storm surges, habitat for birds and wildlife, and nursery grounds for fishes. We need to better understand the nature of wetland gains and losses, identify the types of wetlands that are especially at risk, and implement policies to reverse trends of wetland degradation.

EPA will collaborate with states, tribes, and other federal agencies to implement a field-based survey of the nation’s wetlands in 2011. We will sample about 900 randomly-selected sites using standard monitoring protocols that characterize the plants, algae, soils, and relative wetness of each sampling location. We will also test for high concentrations of chemicals and search for evidence of human and natural impacts at each site. In 2013, we will combine all of this information to produce a baseline assessment that reports the overall health of the nation’s wetlands and identifies the most common wetland threats.

It is crucial that the results of this assessment are used by decision makers to improve how wetlands are managed, restored, and protected. EPA has considered many possibilities for how the information might be used, but certainly have not identified every opportunity. So the question to decision-makers, wetland managers, and the general public is: what information can EPA provide to help you protect wetland resources?