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In Memoriam

By Lari Langford '70

In April 2000, the Water Quality Centre, an ultra-modern research center aimed at the protection of dwindling fresh water supplies around the world, opened in Trent's Environmental Sciences Building. The Centre was established in 1998 with support from the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, the federal Canadian Foundation for Innovation and some private donations. Most recently, a major donation from the R. Samuel McLaughlin Foundation, has provided the means to plan for a permanent facility in a new wing of the Science Complex, which will be constructed by the summer of 2002. When the new space is completed, the Water Quality Centre, with its state-of the-art facilities and instruments, will become a focal point in the new science building and will serve as a showcase for the high-tech research in the aquatic sciences conducted at Trent.

With the downsizing of federal and provincial agencies responsible for the protection of water quality and resources in Canada, water quality has increasingly become the responsibility of the private sector. Ceaseless, and results-oriented research must be carried out to ensure that lakes and rivers sustain the lives that depend on them, while at the same time supporting the needs of industry and sustainable economic development. This is the mission and day-to-day activity of the researchers at Trent's Water Quality Centre, who are developing new analytical approaches to emerging issues in water protection and analysis. They are also developing and refining techniques to be utilized as routine procedures by end-users, such as industry, government agencies, and analytical service-providers. To this end, the Water Quality Centre is working with partners in other universities, industry, municipal water systems, non-governmental organizations, and government.
The Centre operates six Mass Spectrometers, which are used in the measurement of trace levels of harmful substances found in aquatic systems. One of these is Canada's -first Inductively-Coupled Plasma/Time of Flight Mass Spectrometer, manufactured by Leco. The technological capacity at the Centre exceeds that of the highly regarded Canada Centre for Inland Waters, located in Burlington, Ontario.

More important, even than the latest technology, is the training the Centre provides to ensure that future generations of environmental researchers and industry personnel will have the necessary skills to use the technology and to achieve the next breakthroughs in research.

The Water Quality Research Centre is led by Prof. Chris Metcalfe, Trent's Dean of Research and Graduate Studies. He has been researching the concentration of pharmaceutical products, including antibiotics, blood pressure and antidepressant medications, and birth control compounds in the effluents and effluent outflows of sewage treatment plants. Although the Trent Water Quality Centre has produced the only North American data on drugs in sewage treatment plants and surface waters, there is much more research to be done in this area. Dr. Metcalfe and his team are currently developing methods to analyze several classes of antibiotics, musks (fragrance) compounds, X-ray contrast agents, antidepressants, and psychiatric drugs.

Another member of the research staff, Prof. Holger Hintelmann, is conducting research into the formation of organic mercury in the aquatic environment. His research is a vital part of work underway among ten research institutions in Canada and the United States. The metaalicus project (Mercury Experiment to Assess Atmospheric Loadings in Canada and the United States) is a five-year project that will answer, for the first time, what happens to mercury concentrations in fish when there is a change in atmospheric mercury deposition. Prof. Hintelmann's work will assist industry in their remediation efforts and First Nations communities, where fish is an important staple.

In its short lifespan, to date, Trent's Water Quality Centre has already established a major role within the province, in the country and in the world, in supporting the effort to maintain the most essential ingredient affecting the quality of life and the health of humans and the environment ­ clean, fresh water.

(The author acknowledges the assistance of documentation prepared by Prof. Chris Metcalfe in composing this article.)