FSES Advisory Council & Friends
Hard to believe the summer is nearly half over. We have successfully completed several projects that have been featured in previous newsletters. Notably, we completed the Newberg Fish Deformity Study, a public forum was held in Wilsonville June 30, 2004. A final report was submitted; see http://emt.oregonstate.edu/research/owebreport.htm for a complete report. We are now in full swing with one of our newer projects, the bioavailable heavy metal study of soil amendments, sponsored by Oregon Department of Agriculture. We are also continuing our investigations into chemical markers from sub-lethal herbicide exposures and the Willamette River Portland Harbor projects. There never seems to be a dull moment. Just the way we like it! Best wishes to all for an enjoyable summer. If you want to know more about any of the projects a place to start is at the following internet sites:
~FSES Director
FOOD SAFETY
Food Quality Assurance
“Chemical Profiling to Determine Geographic Authenticityof Raw Agricultural Commodities”
Public health security and bio-terrorism preparedness includes protecting a nation’s food supply. Establishing and maintaining knowledge about the origin of food is an important component of securing the food supply. Authenticating food specimens to specific lots (shipments) or geographic regions would be part of assuring a safe food supply and an important tool for forensic investigations or detention of foods that may pose a risk to public health. Chemical trace element compositional analysis of foods provides a scientific foundation to geolocate commodities (foods) on the basis of their chemical composition. Cont pg2.
Food Safety
Organophosphate (OP) pesticides, like azinophos methyl (gluthion), are used on apples. The OP degradation products (metabolites) are not toxic. Some human risk assessments measure the metabolite assuming that the amount measured was the parent OP. In a collaborative project with Dr. Jeff Jenkins, we will be investigating the formation of the metabolite after OP applications on apples. Pictured is Nita Birdsong, OSU BioResource Toxicology student.
Bioavailable Contaminants- Willamette River
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
Newberg Fish Deformity Study
ANSWERS FOUND!
The Newberg area on the Willamette River has shown, a high prevalence of skeletal deformities in fish. The FSES program is part of a larger team of OSU investigators examining this problem. The objective of the study was to determine the likely cause of these skeletal deformities. We focused on water physical and chemical conditions.
Concentrations of bioavailable metals, PCBs, PAHs, organochlorine pesticides, organonitrogen pesticides and organophosphate pesticides were generally below 1 part per trillion. There was also no significant difference in the concentration of these chemicals between the Corvallis and Newberg study sites.
However, the parasite, matacercair, a digenean trematode was directly associated with a large percentage of the deformities detected in Willamette River fish. The weight of evidence suggests that parasitic infection, not chemical contaminants, was the primary cause of skeletal deformities observed in Willamette River fish.
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Pictured is Greg Sower, OSU Toxicology graduate student, in July securing analytical equipment in the Willamette River, Portland Harbor. |
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
PORTLAND HARBOR, WILLAMETTE RIVER
Bioavailable Contaminants
We are continuing our studies at Portland Harbor and the McCormick & Baxter Superfund Sites. Samplers are currently deployed in the harbor, and we are finding that there are both spatial and temporal differences affecting contaminant concentrations. Techniques are being developed as well as evaluating eco-systems based on the bioavailable contaminant load and fate.
