Environmental Impacts of Everyday Items
But they may not be quite as innocuous as you might believe. Each one of these banal, normal activities has the unintended consequence of flushing a host of chemicals and nanomaterials down the drain and, depending on where you live, into the streams, lakes or oceans on which we depend.
“Until recently policy makers regarded these chemicals as environmentally safe,” said Dr. Rebecca Klaper, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences. “This was partly due to the fact that they couldn’t be detected at the low levels at which they were occurring in the environment. But now we know many of them are present in freshwater systems and through laboratory studies we’re finding out not all these chemicals are as benign at low-levels as we once thought.”
That’s because of the rapidly advancing field of genomics—the study of how environmental conditions affect organisms at the molecular level. It’s the same tool that was used to map the human genome and that is now revolutionizing modern medicine. And it’s being applied by Klaper and her colleagues to reveal that the chronic presence of these everyday chemicals—even at low concentrations—may have a significant impact on the behavioral and physiological development of aquatic species.
Klaper’s lab will be one of many at the School of Freshwater Sciences relying on the technologies provided by the Great Lakes Genomics Center, the nation’s first research center dedicated solely to the application of ground-breaking genomic and molecular tools to issues of freshwater.
That’s because of the rapidly advancing field of genomics—the study of how environmental conditions affect organisms at the molecular level. It’s the same tool that was used to map the human genome and that is now revolutionizing modern medicine. And it’s being applied by Klaper and her colleagues to reveal that the chronic presence of these everyday chemicals—even at low concentrations—may have a significant impact on the behavioral and physiological development of aquatic species.
Klaper’s lab will be one of many at the School of Freshwater Sciences relying on the technologies provided by the Great Lakes Genomics Center, the nation’s first research center dedicated solely to the application of ground-breaking genomic and molecular tools to issues of freshwater.
“The genomic tools are being used to answer questions like what are the sources of bacteria pollution that are around different freshwater systems,” explained Klaper. “For my own research it tells us how an organism is responding to an insult—a toxic chemical—and if it’s causing damage, what kind of damage it’s causing. It can tell us how healthy that organism is overall.”
“It also provides us a great way to link up organisms. If you see a response in one organism, chances are you will probably see it in other organisms as well. We use fish as a model for humans, for example, so if we see a gene expression change in a fish you can also potentially see the same kind of expression happening in a human that comes into contact with that chemical. Aquatic organisms can be a model for human health as well.”
Finding stronger linkages between what is seen in aquatic organisms and what is seen in humans—how environmental health relates to human health—is a major goal of Klaper’s research, as well as for the numerous graduate students who work in her lab. She would also like to identify which emerging contaminants need to receive the greatest amount of attention and which ones are relatively benign from an aquatic and human health perspective.
“We are releasing thousands of different chemicals out into the environment every day just using our hair care products, sun screens, make-up, things that we put into fabrics and clothing,” said Klaper, who notes that emerging contaminants—flame retardants, pesticides, steroids and growth hormones, antibacterial and fungicidal agents, nanomaterials from synthetic fibers and cosmetics, and others—enter surface waters from treatment plants, septic systems, runoff and groundwater, landfills, industrial discharges, and commercial animal feeding operations. “Not all of those things are going to have health implications but some may have significant health implications.”
“The goal of our research is to narrow down the scope of which ones we need to get a handle on in the marketplace and which ones we need to pay attention to at the sewage treatment facility and which ones we can mostly ignore. Society has limited resources to treat and clean water, so we need to get the most out of how we use those resources. I want our lakes, rivers, and oceans to be healthy and productive for decades to come.”
