Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Modern society benefits from the use of a large number of chemicals including petroleum and petroleum by-products, solvents, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and fire retardants. Most are relatively innocuous and pose no threat to the health of humans or the environment on which we depend. Some, however, are problematic in that they may persist for long periods of time (e.g. PCBs), they may accumulate in organisms such as fish and birds (e.g. DDT), they may be very toxic (e.g. dioxins) and they may be transported long distances to polar regions (e.g., HCB). Rather than wait for problems to emerge (by which time it may be too late!) it is preferable to be proactive and identify problem chemicals before they contaminate the environment and cause adverse effects. The best way to accomplish this is to use mathematical models to simulate and predict how these chemicals will behave in the environment and what risk they may pose to the ecosystem. I will develop such models, test them to ensure reliability by comparing their predictions against actual observations, and to disseminate them to the user-community. This has been and continues to be the focus of my research. My models are disseminated through the Canadian Centre for Environmental Modelling and Chemistry at Trent University via the internet at a rate of over 300 per month to some 40 countries. More specifically, my research will focus on six areas namely chemical fate and transport in specific locations, regions, and globally with an emphasis on the Canadian arctic, indoor exposure and pharmacokinetic models, bioaccumulation and food webs and finally overall risk assessment to improve chemical management.