Jim Rice, our SRP’s Engineering State Agencies Liaison, gave the following talk at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar Series on November 20,2012.

“An Engineer’s Take on Hazardous Waste: What we’ve learned, what we don’t know, and what we’re doing about it”
The Brown University Superfund Research Program is an interdisciplinary research center funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. We focus on understanding the health effects, transport, and remediation of pollutants commonly found at contaminated sites. This seminar will provide: 1. A general overview of hazardous waste, environmental regulations, and the Brown University Superfund Research Program. 2. A research summary demonstrating the surprisingly complex behavior (i.e., vapor pressure and aqueous solubility) of mixed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are common, combustion-generated environmental pollutants. 3. A case study describing ongoing and innovative bioremediation activities at the Fisherville Mill site in Grafton, MA. The main contaminant of concern is heating oil (a complex mixture of hydrocarbons) released from storage tanks into adjacent surface water and sediment.