Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) are considered some of the most toxic chemicals known to man. We can argue about the apparent toxicity some other time, but personally, I think it might be a little over exaggerated. Nowadays, it is very...
I was working through a report and presentation my company had made on environmental forensics fingerprinting of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from a spill event. I really was enjoying the project because all the data 'made sense'. Nothing makes you feel more confident about results from a big project when...
I was recently working on a project examining odours and had to plan out the difficult logistics of having samples shipped out same day to the laboratory for analysis because of literature documented instability. As I work around these logistics, I can see why many people choose to ignore the fact as it does make life...
Oil sands development in Alberta has been getting a lot of bad press lately. From Dr. Schindler’s work calling for more science to the federal government of Canada taking over monitoring programs and developing scientific advisory panels.
Environmental forensics is the application of scientific methods used to identify the origin and timing of a contaminant release. Continuous passive collection of POPs over decades of time provides a timeline that can be used to date contaminant episodes and releases. Whale ear wax just happens to provide just that…
Keeping up with the scientific literature nowadays could be a full time job itself. I still try to keep up with the literature for all the things I find interesting. These include past research topics from my biomonitoring days at CDC and my graduate studies as well as to current day business client’s interests, such...
I was at a conference in Corvallis, OR on the topic of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons called ISPAC 2013 (www.ispac2013.com) a couple of weeks ago. I was invited to give one of the plenary talks on PAHs on the subject matter of PAH use in environmental forensics investigations. I have recently posted a guest blog at ...
The oil sands of Alberta are receiving a lot of interest internationally for the potential environmental impacts due to mining and SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) extraction of this resource as well as for the debate around the Keystone XL pipeline. Even Robert Redford is latest to give his view (again, it was...
Your gut answer to that question is yes, especially if you are old enough to have experience searching journals and science publications at the university library. In case you missed that opportunity it went something like this: searching information on monochromatic computer screens, printing search results on dot...