UMaine Student Studies Toxins in Maine’s Rivers
Contact: David Munson (207) 581-3777
The quiet backwaters of Pleasant River and Bog brook in Washington County are a popular destination for many, offering paddlers and hikers alike scenic views of scented woods and rolling pastures. UMaine doctoral student Lucner Charlestra has spent untold hours on the small rivers of coastal Maine, but he doesn’t go there for the scenery.
He’s looking for the rivers’ dark side.
Charlestra is working with UMaine professor Howard Patterson to determine the concentrations of harmful pesticides in Maine’s salmon rivers. Charlestra first came to Maine from Haiti in 2003, using his Fulbright Fellowship to pursue his master’s degree in environmental science and ecology. After completing a successful pilot project that pioneered the use of the Polar Organic Chemicals Integrative Sampler in measuring the concentration of dioxin, Charlestra returned to UMaine to pursue his doctorate and continue his research, a decision that led to some considerable political wrangling.
New federal requirements for international students led to a nearly impenetrable tangle of bureaucratic red tape, but, with letters of support from UMaine and Senator Susan Collins, Charlestra’s return to Maine was finally approved and the second phase of his research began.
“We were the first to use the POCIS device for these pesticides. Now that we have proved that it works, we need to develop techniques that increase the accuracy of the measurements and we need to gather more data,” said Charlestra. “I will be determining sampling parameters in the lab through the spring, and then we will go back out in the field next summer.”
Pesticides used on blueberry fields, farms and in residential applications often find their way into Maine’s rivers and streams, but in most areas their concentrations are largely unknown. Under a federal mandate to protect populations of endangered Atlantic salmon in Maine’s rivers, policy makers are looking for ways to better understand the relationship between the use of pesticides and the health of the rivers’ fish populations.
According to Charlestra, the POCIS device has a distinct advantage over traditional water sampling techniques in measuring the concentration of pesticides and other compounds. Rather than measuring concentrations at a single moment in time, Charlestra is able to look at changes in concentrations over longer periods by suspending the specialized sampler in the water column for several days or weeks. With support from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Atlantic Salmon Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey, Charlestra hopes his research will provide new information for scientists and policy makers.
“In order to protect Maine’s salmon populations, we need to better understand the extent to which they are exposed to contaminants,” said Charlestra. “The information from my research can be used to inform the people who make policy concerning salmon.”