Summary for Monday March 1st

After we finished tasting fresh to brackish (salt) water, we looked at the water quality implications of As in chicken feed, chicken meat, and chicken excrement. The important concepts from our perspective are: (a) if there is more As in our food then maybe there needs to be less As in our water and (b) As supplements in chicken feed may lead to higher As in water passing through/coming from areas fertilized with chicken waste. We then looked at the results of the Superfund sites where you live homework assignment (including the Hanford Site) and some of the inorganic (toxic metals) that are more commonly found at massively polluted sites such as those that make the NPL. We looked specifically at Cu, Cr, Cd, and Ni. On Wednesday, we will continue with inorganic pollutants, landfills (RCRA), water treatment, and organic pollutants.

I would like for you to read two articles for Friday's class:

Cocaine in surface waters: a new evidence-based tool to monitor community drug abuse by Ettore Zuccato et al. (2005)- a peer-reviewed article from the Journal Environmental Health on the prevalence of cocaine metabolites in the rivers of Northern Italy (.html) (.pdf)

Drugging Our Waters by Elizabeth Royte on the prevalence of prescription drugs and drug metabolites in US waters. (.html) (.pdf)

Slides shown in lecture today have been posted as a .pdf to Sakai.

The my maps page has been updated with the locations mentioned in today's lecture.