To that end, for the last three years Hemond and other researchers, including faculty and students, have been collecting the data they'll use to piece together those chemical pathways. Over the last 150 years, thousands of tons of toxic wastes from leather, chemical and other industries were dumped into the waterways of the Aberjona watershed. To study those pollutants the researchers divided into two groups. The Hemond group wants to understand where the pollutants are now, where they're going, and in what form. At the same time, the Thilly group is working to identify which chemicals residents around the watershed might have been exposed to and what their effects on the human body might be.
Field work is crucial to that goal.
For example, scientists in the Hemond group can often be found at the watershed wading in hip boots to collect water and sediment samples, or otherwise carrying out the tedious work of collecting data. One of the first steps in the study is to find out how fast and in what direction water moves in the watershed. Currently graduate student Jill Reynolds of civil engineering is exploring how ground water moves in the watershed and gets into surface water. Tracing both becomes complicated, however, because these chemicals can change form. Many metals, for example, bind onto sediment particles in streams.