UConn team to study nationwide impacts of emerging pollutants

GROTON — Researchers at the University of Connecticut’s Avery Point campus said Tuesday they will embark on a multi-state effort to gain a better understanding of emergent contaminants in the nation’s water, with the backing of a new $850,000 federal grant.

The grant was announced this week by the National Sea Grant office, and will be split between Sea Grant programs in Connecticut, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

The Connecticut Sea Grant program is based at Avery Point.

Sylvain De Guise, director of the Connecticut Sea Grant Program, said the purpose of the study will be to examine the polluting effects of contaminants of emerging concern, or CECs, which he said included chemicals, cleaning products and pharmaceuticals that were developed to replace older products that were phased out due to known concerns over their harmful effects on the environment.

“There’s a whole new class of chemicals that we know very little about,” De Guise said.

One example of CECs that have attracted recent interest in Connecticut are a group of chemicals known as per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, which were marketed for decades for use in firefighting foams before a series of high-profile spills along the Farmington River led to greater scrutiny of their use.

State lawmakers passed a wide-ranging ban on PFAS chemicals this year, and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection plans to inspect thousands of wells in the state for potential contamination.

“They were brought into the market or brought into use before we understood their toxicity, their life cycle, how long they take to break down in the environment,” De Guise said, referring to PFAS and other CECs.

In a statement announcing the grant on Monday, National Sea Grant College Program Director Jonathan Pennock said the effort will also help develop longer-term strategies across the national network of 34 Sea Grant universities to combat pollution and CECs.

“Sea Grant’s latest investments demonstrate our commitment to address knowledge gaps to improve the management of freshwater resources at the interface of both coastal and Great Lakes environments,” Pennock said.

In the first phase of their partnership, De Guise said,

researchers at UConn will work with their partners in New Hampshire and North Carolina on a “scoping exercise” that will seek input from experts, regulators and non-governmental organizations to find gaps in the existing understanding of CECs.

For example, De Guise said, if the researchers find that ample lab studies on

CECs have not not been backed up by field work, then the researchers will focus their efforts there, or vice versa. The project will also examine possibilities for public outreach over individual efforts to reduce the use CECs that pollute the environment.

The goal will be to “find the sweet spot that will return the biggest return

on investment for our research dollars,” De Guise said.

The initial scoping phase of the project will take one year, De Guise said, and will be followed by two years of research work by the Sea Grant programs. At least three staff members at UConn Avery Point, led by De Guise, will work on the project during that time.

Will Waldron / Albany Times Union Containers are used to collect soil and water samples to detect for PFAS from the Norlite aggregate plant in New York state. A team of researchers at UConn Avery Point said this week that they will study the impact of emerging pollutants such as PFAS chemicals.