Clarkson group gets $6.5m to study toxins

POTSDAM — Three Clarkson University scientists have been awarded $6.5 million in a five-year grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to study fish health in the Great Lakes.

The grant also includes faculty from SUNY Fredonia and SUNY Oswego. The funding will make it possible to continue a project that began in 2006 to monitor contaminants in fish, as well as mercury levels in the water.

In the past, the group has monitored only known toxins, such as pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls and others. This time around, it also will be able to look at suspected pollutants because of an increase in the grant amount.

"Not that we're not interested in the legacy contaminants, but at the same time, we'd better start understanding what we're doing today in terms of putting things down the drain or in the air that then get deposited in the lakes so we don't end up with the 'Aha!' moment of the 1970s," said Philip K. Hopke, director of Clarkson's Institute for a Sustainable Environment.

The project, the Great Lakes Fish Monitoring and Surveillance Program, has been going on since the 1970s under the sponsorship of the EPA. Clarkson first got involved with the program in 2006 with a $1.75 million award. The increase of $4.75 million is a result of the federal stimulus package, Mr. Hopke said.

The funding allows for the purchase of more sophisticated equipment to analyze fish tissue samples as well as the study of potential contaminants such as pharmaceuticals or "artificial musks," which are the scents added to items such as laundry detergents.

"We are now, unfortunately, in a time where we no longer think things are clean unless they smell," Mr. Hopke said. "Your spring-fresh Tide is spring fresh because of an artificial musk."

The team will look at the fish at the top of the food chain, rather than other organisms or water concentrations, because that is where the pollutants can be found in the highest levels.

Team members will use the information they find over the next five years to create mathematical models that will allow scientists to attempt to predict what other contaminants might do in similar situations. The work will begin this summer in Lake Superior.

It is not likely that the group of researchers will be able to predict the effect on humans who eat the contaminated fish, since the Great Lakes have been under health advisories for years. Research projects such as Clarkson's are what put the advisories on the lakes in the first place, Mr. Hopke said.

"The first step is to figure out what's out there," he said. "Once we have a good idea of what's out there, if this represents an increased health hazard, whether there is a need for a new health advisory, this is really somewhere down the line."