Chemistry Matters' Blog

To determine whether someone qualifies as an expert, we must first define the term. An expert is typically seen as knowledgeable and capable.. But what does that truly mean? Let me share a personal experience to illustrate this. When I purchased my first home, I needed to install a second water heater. Fortunately,...

In my last post, I discussed the difficulties in finding an expert. I presented some of the differences in the context of the word ‘expert’. The word means something different depending on your perspective and needs.

How hard is it to find an expert?

I am guessing… it's probably really hard.   Not because there are not experts out there.

GI Joe was wrong!Knowing is nothalf the battle (in environmental work)!It is barely a tenth of the battle, at best.There is a lot of confusion in the environmental industry, maybe even misrepresentation of what a company or person is capable of doing and what they are actually qualified to do.Especially nowadays...

This is the third in a series of blogs on river PAHs (Blog 1 and Blog 2 on River PAHs are here). The aim of our investigations is to answer the question “where did the PAHs come from that were present in all of the Alberta and Saskatchewan rivers?”

In the first post of this series on River PAHs characterization, we described the background to why we have spent many hours driving across Alberta from border to border to collect sediment samples from the rivers of southern Alberta.

For the last few years we have spent a lot of our free time collecting sediment samples from rivers across southern Alberta and characterizing these for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Often driving many hours across prairie gravel roads for a single good sample, it quickly became a passion of quality...

In the first post of this series, I described the basis for how we became involved in determining a method for the detection of a natural, biogenic source of toluene. In this post, I describe how the process works and provide some thoughts on how to conduct an investigation.

You have had a spill… don’t panic, everything will be fine. Accidents happen. It is what you do next that is important. I have worked on many spills and here are what I believe are four of the most important things from a chemist’s perspective.

In 2015, Chemistry Matters Inc. (CMI) provided the scientific support for Nexen at Long Lake during their emulsion release. As part of that role, I pored over data every evening, often long through the night to be able to communicate results to regulators and Nexen management and to put together the next day's...