Environmental Sources, Processes and Risks of Organic Contaminants: Monitoring, Modeling, and Integrated Assessments

Our modern society and everyday life rely on tens of thousands of chemicals, most of which eventually enter the environment. Once there, these chemicals can be transported from sources to different environmental media and undergo transformation processes. environmental risks of chemicals are associated with their source emissions and environmental fate processes. Assessing the risks of complex environmental mixtures is challenging for environmental risk assessors and decision-makers.

In this seminar, I will introduce my research program that aims to address the organic mixture challenge by identifying chemicals of environmental concern and characterizing important environmental processes. Using specific studies, I will introduce passive sampling, non-targeted chemical analysis, and computational model simulations I have developed or used to discover and characterize chemicals of environmental concern. Finally, I will share my perspectives on how to better address environmental issues related to organic chemicals through interdisciplinary approaches involving different stakeholders.

Part of the GPE Brown Bag Seminar Series.