We are happy to invite you to the lecture by Prof. Susan D. Richardson on the topic of “Emerging Contaminants: State of the Art and New Discoveries” taking place on the 14th of August 2019. Follow the event on Facebook.
Emerging Contaminants
Environmental research continues to expand beyond traditional, regulated contaminants to emerging contaminants, such as sucralose and other artificial sweeteners, nanomaterials, perfluorinated compounds, pharmaceuticals, hormones, drinking water and swimming pool disinfection by-products (DBPs), 1,4-dioxane, sunscreens/UV filters, flame retardants, benzotriazoles, naphthenic acids, algal toxins, and new contaminants on the horizon: ionic liquids and microplastics. These are now frequently being found in water samples, including rivers, lakes, ground water, and drinking water. Moreover, understanding their fate and transport in the environment and in wastewater/drinking water treatment is vitally important, and as such, one of the major trends continues to be in identifying their transformation products. Because environmental samples are inherently complex mixtures with trace-level contaminants, mass spectrometry has been key for their identification and measurement. This presentation will provide an overview of the state of the science for emerging contaminants, their formation and transformation in the environment, and the modern tools used to measure them.
Susan D. Richardson
Susan D. Richardson is the Arthur Sease Williams Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina. Prior to coming to USC in January 2014, she was a Research Chemist for several years at the U.S. EPA’s National Exposure Research Laboratory in Athens, GA. For the last several years, Susan has been conducting research in drinking water—specifically in the study of toxicologically important disinfection by-products (DBPs). Susan is the recipient of the 2008 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Advancements in Environmental Science & Technology, has received an honorary doctorate from Cape Breton University in Canada (2006), and was recognized as an ACS Fellow in 2016. Susan was also recently elected as the Vice President/President Elect for the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. Susan also serves as an Associate Editor for the journals Environmental Science & Technology and Water Research, and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, and Journal of Environmental Sciences. Susan has published more than 150 journal articles and book chapters and continues to write an ongoing invited biennial review for the journal Analytical Chemistry, entitled “Water Analysis: Emerging Contaminants and Current Issues”. She has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Emory University and a B.S. in Chemistry & Mathematics from Georgia College & State University.