Is It Safe?

Stephanie McPherson for TEI

Bring a sample of soil from a playground or water from a well and Julian Tyson, Associate Dean and Professor of Chemistry, can tell you if it is toxic. “In the broadest sense, a lot of what we do is answering ‘is it safe,’ and ‘it’ can be all kinds of things,” Tyson says. “We’re monitoring the safety of the immediate environment.” Tyson, who has been at the University for 19 years and assumed responsibilities of Associate Dean this semester, is working to develop more efficient methods of detecting toxic elements in the environment. “You can go to a standard textbook and look up a method for measuring the total arsenic concentration in soil,” Tyson says, but reading about a method detailing how to find the levels of specific compounds of arsenic is impossible. “That method doesn’t exist,” he says.

Right now, the majority of Tyson’s work deals with the detection and removal of arsenic, mainly overseas. “We’re interested in helping countries that have arsenic in the groundwater by coming up with some simple procedure that is portable,” Tyson says. “Somebody can actually go to the village where all these wells are and, right at the side of the well, can measure the amount of arsenic that’s in the water without having to take the sample back to the lab.”

One option is a technique called “naked-eye” detection. As a result of a water test, a color is produced, which is then compared with a predetermined range of calibration colors to “see” the concentration of arsenic. To make the results even more reliable, Tyson and his colleagues are trying to develop a portable digital image analysis using scanners or digital cameras. The electronics could be carried to the side of the well then plugged into a car battery to analyze the colors.

Phytoremediation, the use of plants to absorb toxins, is another area of research. Tyson is working to develop new methods to use plants to absorb metal contaminants in the environment. “The beauty of phytoremediation is if you can concentrate the toxic chemical into the above ground or above surface biomass, then you can harvest it and allow it to regrow. That’s, I think, the ideal,” says Tyson. It hasn’t happened yet, as most plants absorb and store toxins in their roots, but Tyson says it’s a goal. The practical applications for this research are many and Tyson and his team have ties to the Bangladesh Agricultural University at Mymensingh to work on this area of research.

In another area of research, Tyson is examining mercury levels in fish. “People who are concerned about the environmental impact of mercury want to know how much inorganic mercury there is which is not so toxic, and how much methylated mercury there is, which is very toxic,” Tyson says. So far, he and his collaborators have published a number of papers detailing potential methods of separation and detection of these two types of mercury.

With funding from the Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing at UMass Amherst, Tyson is also working on the occurrence of manufactured nanoparticles in the environment, particularly gold, which is a byproduct of manufacturing processes, and titanium dioxide, which is found in sunscreen. For humans, these compounds are not so toxic, but “the implications for the health of organisms in the environment are perhaps much more severe,” Tyson says. “So [there is the potential that] whole ecosystems could be disrupted.” The gold nanoparticles could be used to transport drugs to tumors, so he is now working on a method to determine its toxicity to humans. Tyson is also currently working with the Water Resources Research Center’s Environmental Analysis Laboratory at The Environmental Institute, providing an analysis of a number of materials for researchers, including water and soil.

With all of his work, Tyson makes a point to remember the students and involve them in invaluable research experiences. “We’re interested in integrating our research with teaching and learning,” he says. Each semester, Tyson teaches a course that puts first year students in a real-life research situation, assigning them the task of creating new techniques to detect arsenic in soil and water. “I construct the course as though it was an authentic research activity,” Tyson says. Students try to take commonplace items that could be viewed as trash and create a water filter to remove deadly arsenic. “Almost every semester, we have students come up with something that works,” says Tyson, citing successes such as moldy, used coffee grounds, steel wool and bacon fat. “The students have been very ingenious in terms of what they’ve tried,” he says. Though they are successful in the laboratory, these ideas do not necessarily translate well into the real world. There are all sorts of logistics to contend with, including project scale-up.

Tyson has also worked with middle school students in Springfield to gather soil and water from schoolyards to test for arsenic that has come from pressure-treated wood. Tyson used grant funding to provide the classrooms with elementary testing kits for this purpose. Though the grant has run out, Tyson and his graduate students still run the program with middle school teachers out of Springfield and Easthampton, Massachusetts. “[I have] a not-so-hidden agenda to get kids interested in science,” he says.