Environmental Engineering & Toxicology

"I've worked on contaminated sites for more than 20 years and I've never seen anything on the scale that I saw in Nigeria," said Donna Vorhees, an adjunct assistant professor of environmental health at BUSPH. "They're not just exposed – these people are actually living in petroleum." Read the full story

The California condor's return from near extinction is threatened by persistent exposure to lead-based bullets, despite intensive efforts to treat and care for poisoned birds each year, scientists say. Lead poisoning in the condors is now "of epidemic proportions," said Myra Finkelstein, a research toxicologist at UC Santa Cruz and the principal author of a report on the condor problem in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read the full story

Professor Alvarez-Cohen develops methods for bioremediation of contaminants such as perchloroethene and trichloroethene using naturally occurring microorganisms, particularly one type known as "dehalococcoides." She uses advanced molecular methods to understand key elements of this process, looking at increasingly complex cultures of microorganisms. Molecular tools provide clues about how the systems work and, consequently, what can be done to enhance bioremediation.

“Imagine taking some parts from a car, from an air conditioning system, some more parts from a plumber, and you build a machine that is run with heat instead of gasoline. Then you hook it up to a free energy source such as the sun, and what you get is a clean, sustainable, cost-efficient source of hot water, electricity and even cooling.” Since 2005, Matt and his team have been doing exactly that in Lesotho: Building a solar powered plant for a local hospital as a showcase project for other applications.

"Our interest is to push energy efficiency as rapidly as we can to address very, very serious problems of climate change," competition organizer Karina Garbesi said. Read the full story and watch a video

“I obviously can’t speak for all farmers, but competition and the downward pressure on food prices means that farmers have to go to great lengths to satisfy customers,” Mulvaney said. “If there’s anything not in alignment with sales, it will not be balanced. Selling food is number one.” Read the full story

But away from transmission lines, DC is also gaining ground as an alternative in the developing world, according to Karina Garbesi, a professor and visiting researcher at LBNL. Getting power to remote areas from an AC grid is very costly and doesn't make much sense, since some of these regions can construct wind turbines and solar farms.