McDonough Studies Emerging Contaminants

It all started with Mr. Southard. Carrie McDonough was a high school student when Don Southard, her beloved chemistry teacher, told her about the origins of acid rain: sulfur dioxide emissions—usually from smokestacks—that react with water molecules to produce acids. She was fascinated by the science, but also troubled by the consequences: a pernicious effect […]

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Emerging Contaminants

When a group of hazardous chemicals were detected in Narragansett Bay by Graduate School of Oceanography professor Rainer Lohmann and graduate student Victoria Sacks, the local media took notice. Lohmann was interviewed on Channel 12 and WPRO radio, and news stories appeared in the Providence Journal, Boston Globe, EcoRI, WBRU and elsewhere. The URI news release on the project can be found here.

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GSO Grad Student Wins Award

GSO graduate student Victoria Paris Sacks was awarded 1st place by the Montgomery-Watson-Harza Consulting Engineers/Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors for her Master's Thesis "Validation of Polyethylene Passive Samplers for the Detection of Emerging Contaminants" in the Master's Thesis category.  Her research, advised by Dr. Rainer Lohmann, focused on using a novel, low-tech method of measuring waterborne contaminants from personal care products, pharmaceutical, and industrial processes not previously known as pollutants (e.g. polybrominated diphenylethers, nonylphenols, and triclosan).  

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RV Endeavor Heads to Gulf Oil Spill

As the effort to fight the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues, the University of Rhode Island research vessel RV Endeavor is participating in studying the scope of the spill. The purpose of the mission, funded by the National Science Foundation, is to track, characterize and sample subsurface oil in the Gulf.

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Seeing Clear: Perspectives on the Gulf Oil Spill

URI experts have been on the front line in addressing the crisis of the Gulf oil spill. Now they are coming together to tell us what happened, what we learned, and where we go from here. Join us for Seeing Clear: URI Perspectives on the Gulf Oil Spill, a special evening at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. For more information, please read the full press release.

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