URI, Harvard to study water contamination

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — University of Rhode Island and Harvard University professors are collaborating through a new research center to study chemicals that have contaminated water at sites nationwide.

The chemicals, called perfluorinated chemicals, have been linked to cancer and other illnesses but aren't federally regulated in drinking water. Water has been contaminated near sites of industrial facilities and U.S. military bases.

URI announced Tuesday that it received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to establish a center focused on gaining a better understanding of how these chemicals make their way into water, through the food chain, and affect people and animals.

They will work with communities in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where contamination has been an issue. They also want to develop new detection tools.

They chemicals are found in many household products and in firefighting foam used by the U.S. military.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued stricter guidelines last year regarding human exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOS and PFOA, which are not currently federally regulated in drinking water.

"So frustratingly little has been done on the regulatory side, I thought a center like this could help," said professor Rainer Lohmann of the URI Graduate School of Oceanography.

Lohmann, an environmental chemist, said he wants to give regulators the information they need to help communities dealing with contamination. He's trying to devise a better way to sample and measure water for perfluorinated chemicals.

Lohmann applied for the funding to start the research center with his URI colleagues, experts at Harvard and at the nonprofit Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts.