URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2018_Melissa-McCarthy

Filtering water (left to right) Yuxin Ma, Ph.D., Shanghai Ocean University; Christine Gardiner and Anna Robuck, URI graduate students of oceanography.

Many of the chemicals Lohmann finds in the environment today were banned more than 40 years ago but continue to be detected at harmful levels.

professor of pharmaceutical sciences; and Judith Swift, professor of communication studies and director of the Coastal Institute, along with the Institute’s assistant director Nicole Rohr and digital media specialist Amber Neville. They will be joined by researchers from Harvard University and the Silent Spring Institute to focus on fluorinated pollutants commonly used on non-stick cookware and firefighting foam known to contaminate drinking water. The researchers will examine to what degree groundwater in towns near the Joint Base Cape Cod military training site is contaminated with the chemicals, which were present in firefighting foam used during training exercises. The chemicals have been linked to kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, colitis, and suppression of the immune system – maladies that lend urgency to the study. back row (left to right) Jitka Becanova, Ph.D., oceanography postdoctoral fellow; Dave Adelman, oceanography lab manager; Anna Robuck, oceanography graduate student. front row (left to right) Christine Gardiner, oceanography graduate student; Yuxin Ma, Ph.D., Shanghai Ocean University; Simon Vojta, Ph.D., oceanography postdoctoral fellow.

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