Mitchell Center strives for health and safety

In recent years, a lot of Maine people have come to know that mercury is a toxin which, even in small doses, may harm human fetal development and reduce reproduction in eagles and loons. It doesn’t take an expert to realize that when mercury in fish is higher than normal, we have a problem. However, science was necessary to identify this problem in the first place and will be necessary for us to figure out what we can do about it in the future.

The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine conducts research on mercury contamination as well as natural resources that underlie half of the Maine economy, from lakes to forests to groundwater re-sources. A significant part of this effort has been in environmental toxics that are in the headlines every week, including mercury, dioxin, MTBE and arsenic.

For example, Mitchell Center researchers are studying mercury in small watersheds at Acadia National Park. This work is revealing factors that control when and how mercury gets into lakes and streams. The results will be important for creating more accurate and possibly more limited mercury health advisories for fish consumption. Consumers as well as recreation and tourism businesses will benefit by knowing where mercury in fish is high and where it is not.

As geologists, Steve Norton and I are working in partnership with Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), to assess mercury levels in lake sediments around the now closed Orrington plant. The goal is to determine past and present trends in order to predict the progress of mercury abatement.

The 1999 Maine mercury discharge law is one of the strongest in the nation. Maine businesses and sewage treatment plants must test for mercury at parts per trillion levels to ensure that their discharges are not higher than background levels. The DEP recommends three laboratories for this analysis nation-wide. Two are in Seattle, and the other is the Mitchell Center at UMaine, which has four mercury analyzers for its research program in partnership with Terry Haines of the U.S. Geological Survey. As a result, business and tax dollars stay in Maine and provide employment and education opportunities for our students.

Prior to 1996, state government spent nearly $400,000 each year on out-of-state laboratories and consultants, especially to address dioxins and PCBs in Maine waters. The legislative leadership saw an opportunity to invest tax dollars in the state and to increase funding to the university by asking UMaine to develop new technologies for Maine. In response, the center leveraged state dollars by winning $600,000 from the National Science Foundation and created the Maine Environmental Toxics Laboratory. Since 1996, this partnership with the DEP has attracted an additional $2.3 million in funding and contracts.

Another focus for research is dioxin. Graduate student Heather Shoven and her advisors Howard Patterson and Therese Anderson, in collaboration with the DEP, are developing new applications of technology to measure dioxins in rivers. This new technology may replace the destructive sampling of fish to determine compliance with the 1997 Maine ‘upstream-downstream’ law that has led to reductions in dioxin discharges to our major rivers.

Quality control is an essential part of reliable science. To assure that scientific standards are met, the Center built the first two “clean” labs in the University of Maine System, allowing the detection of dioxin at parts per quadrillion levels. Today, the laboratory is responsible for the dioxin, mercury, PCB, and pesticide testing upon which the state health advisories for fish consumption are set by the state toxicologist, Dr. Andrew Smith.

In total, more than $2 million in state-of-the-art equipment has been purchased with research dollars to provide ample opportunities for state and university researchers and students. That investment has attracted an additional $12 million in research dollars in the past decade. The center provides 15 jobs and supports more than two dozen graduate students each year. As spin-offs of this research, the Mitchell Center has provided analytical support for several other high profile research projects, including the “banana sensor” and “biosensor” research of the acclaimed UMaine Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology.

For every $1 of base budget from the university, the Mitchell Center has obtained $21, mostly from the federal government, since 1995. Maine citizens benefit from improved understanding and management of Maine’s natural resources. Most important are the numerous benefits to the health and safety of today’s generations and those to come.

Steve Kahl is director of the Mitchell Center at the University of Maine and conducts research on chemical processes in watersheds.