Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

A large amount of environmental risks, resulting from emerging contaminants, poses significant threats to human health and wildlife ecosystems, e.g, over 100 new contaminants including microplastics and fire-retardant chemicals were recently found in the blood of pregnant woman, which may carry on for generations. Consequently, significant challenges and gaps are pressing including the very little understanding of new emerging contaminants in the environment. Building on the related results of the last DG program, which yielded over 80 journal publications and the graduation of 8 PhD students (e.g., one obtained tenure track position at UNB), this new DG proposes a cutting-edge research program to tackle the above mentioned urgent problems, which aims to extend and integrate the numerical regional environmental multimedia modeling approach to consider multiple contaminants and high-performance computation with high resolution satellite remote sensing, AI data models, IoT-based sensor networks, and decision analysis. The proposed new modeling and assessment tools can quantitatively analyze environmental risks arising from emerging challenges (e.g., concerns of engineered nanomaterials and microplastics). The proposed systematic risk assessment and decision toolset will be invaluable on examining major pollution source identification and control with emerging circular economies, including the conversion of various solid wastes (e.g., plastics, sludge, biomasses) into valuable products like biofuels. This integration of the proposed cutting-edge technologies represents an advanced and highly interdisciplinary approach and will place our research at the forefront of environmental risk assessment, to support systematic decision making on the management of emerging contaminants.          The proposed research will include representative regional scale case studies in diverse regions through the earlier established research collaborations and partnership. This will involve field study cases in the Northern America and particularly Northern Canada, possibly including indigenous communities in Nunavik and Northwest Territories, to help them monitor and control emerging contaminants and pollution in real-time. The project will also explore novel waste conversion technology options within an integrated decision analysis framework that can reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal and generate valuable products such as biofuels. By doing so, the project will contribute to the improvement of Canada's community's health, food safety, and environmental quality with cost-effective solutions to assess and remove emerging contaminants, as well as the advancement of circular economy and sustainable development. The project will also encompass related socioeconomic factors through practical applications that can enhance the social acceptance and economic viability of the proposed solutions.