Chemicals In The Environment

Associate Professor Suzie Reichman of RMIT University is planning to talk about her recent research on environmental contaminants. Suzie is an expert on inorganic environmental contaminants – how they got there, what effect they have on plans and people, and how to eliminate them. She has in the past done a lot of work on soil and mine site remediation, and is now looking at inorganic contaminants in urban environments. Titles of her recent publications include: “Immobilisation of geogenic arsenic and vanadium in iron-rich sediments and iron stone deposits”; “Quantifying factors related to urban metal contamination in vegetable garden soils of the west and north of Melbourne, Australia”; “Phosphorus-rich biochars can transform lead in an urban contaminated soil”; “The guard cell ionome: Understanding the role of ions in guard cell functions”.

Dr Brad Clarke’s research focuses on assessing the risk to public health and the environment from legacy and emerging persistent organic pollutants, e.g. per- and poly-fluoralkyl substances (PFAS), brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and microplastics. Brad’s research group applies novel analytical techniques to quantify trace level organic pollutants in environmental matrices (soil, water, biological tissues) as well as time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry for identifying unknown emerging contaminants in the environment. Brad is lead researcher of the Australian Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants (ALEC) that is a partnership involving Agilent and Eurofins. In this talk Brad will discuss the illicit chemical stockpile fire in Footscray and how LCQTOF ‘untargeted analysis’ allows for the identification of contaminants released into the environment.