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Receptor Modelling in Environmental Forensics

Environmental forensics investigations sometimes require the determination of which contaminants came from where and how much is from each of the sources present on the site. This is called source apportionment and is a rapidly growing field in environmental litigation and environmental forensics. It is a field...

Preserve your PAH samples for extended hold times

One of the more common chemical groups that we work on is polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). I have worked on them since 2002 when I developed methods to measure human exposure to PAHs at the Centers for Disease Control and have been working on them ever since. Since 2004, the projects involved PAHs and PAH...

River PAHs Characterization Part 3: 2017 – Red Deer Lakes, Sulfur Springs and an abandoned coal mine

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?”

River PAHs Characterization Part 2: 2016 – Foothills to Prairies

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.

River PAHs Characterization Part 1: An Introduction

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...

Biogenic Toluene - Where does it come from?

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.

Advice from your chemist - top four things when dealing with your spill into a river

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.

Toluene is natural - really?

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...

3 Real-Life Examples of How Chemists Keep the Science 'On the Rails' During an Oil Spill Response

My last blog post on the need for having a trusted chemist on your oil spill response team created a bit of a stir on LinkedIn with everyone insisting they have a more important role or a role that is of higher priority. Thank you all for the comments and the responses, this is what social media is about!

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