A new study from the University of Nevada, Reno, is likely to play a significant role in the worldwide fight to measure airborne mercury pollution, which poses a substantial health risk to both humans and animals. The researchers confirmed that modern technologies, including those developed at the University, measure airborne mercury contamination significantly more effectively than older techniques that have been widely used for decades. Indeed, the researchers discovered that older equipment under measures mercury amounts by up to 80%.
Sarrah Dunham-Cheatham and Mae Gustin, both from the University’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology, and Natural Resources, led the study. Dunham-Cheatham is a research assistant professor and the head of the University’s Core Analytical Laboratory, a research facility shared by the College’s Experiment Station and the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Gustin is an environmental geochemistry professor in the Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Science at the College. Both work as members of the Experiment Station section of the College.
Seth Lyman, an associate professor at Utah State University who received his doctorate in environmental sciences from the University of Nevada, Reno, is the third author of the study, which was published this month in the peer-reviewed journal Science of the Total Environment.
The hazard posed by mercury contamination is so serious that 139 countries have joined the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a decade-long United Nations commitment to minimise mercury emissions. Mercury may cause catastrophic brain damage as well as other health problems. Infants and unborn children are particularly vulnerable.
“Every time anybody takes a breath, they’re breathing in mercury,” Dunham-Cheatham adds, explaining how mercury from small-scale gold mining, coal-burning power plants, cement makers, and other industrial activities is conveyed across the globe.
Mercury is deposited in soil and water as it travels through the atmosphere, where it enters the food chain. Humans are in danger from mercury-contaminated seafood. As does mercury-tainted rice. High levels of mercury disrupt the reproductive of birds and other species, resulting in a silent death toll. Despite well-documented knowledge of the environmental consequences, attempts to develop worldwide regulations to decrease the threat have been impeded by a lack of adequate equipment to assess airborne mercury contamination.
Gustin claims she started voicing concerns in the scientific community more than 15 years ago regarding the accuracy of measurements of airborne mercury generated by the technology at the time. Her concerns were greeted with considerable opposition from scientists who had made large financial and professional commitments in the earlier measuring techniques that had been in use since the mid-1990s.
However, as evidence of the limitations of previous methods collected, Gustin claims that a growing consensus of academics grew to feel that a more precise measuring technique was necessary. Gustin and Jiaoyan Huang—then a postdoctoral student at the University and now a member of Sonoma Technology’s air quality group—began a decade of effort in 2013 to build an alternative new technology.
“Changing ideology and forming a new worldview requires a lot of effort,” Gustin explains.
For a whole year, the researchers evaluated four air-sampling systems that employ modern measuring technology, as well as one of the older equipment, at the University’s Valley Road Greenhouse Complex, which is part of the Experiment Station. Researchers claim in an article published this month that modern methods, which use nylon or polyethersulfone membranes to absorb airborne mercury, are substantially more accurate than previous systems. One version of the technology used in two of the four systems tested was created at the University of Nevada, Reno by a team headed by Gustin; the technology used in the other two new systems was developed at Utah State University.
Researchers are now fine-tuning the materials used to make the membranes utilised in the new monitoring methods, according to Gustin.
“Membranes are simple to gather, evaluate, and deploy,” she explains. “Many researchers would find this strategy feasible.
“The new membrane samplers have been tested in over a dozen places throughout the globe, from Peavine Peak outside Reno to Svalbard in far-northern Norway, and from Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean to the beaches of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, in partnership with international scientists.
“This is how science progresses,” Gustin explains. “You create something, and if it’s excellent, other people test it and get on board.”
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