2008 An Environmental Crossroads

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Global warming clouds our future. Pollution degrades our air, soil and water. Environmental toxins compromise the health of our children. Misuse threatens the sustainability of our forests, fisheries, wetlands and coasts, and the health of species that live there.

But there is reason for hope.

Through sound science and policy research, we're finding answers to these problems. Airborne lead and acid rain have been dramatically reduced. Industrial water pollution has decreased. Habitats are being preserved.

Faculty members from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University are part of the effort to help find these answers and establish new environmental practices and policies to safeguard our natural resources for generations to come.

To contact our experts or learn more about what we're doing in states across the nation, click on the state you're interested in.

Water Quality
New Castle County ranks fourth nationally for the amount of recognized developmental toxicants being released into its water. In 2002, nearly 12,000 pounds of the toxicants were dumped into the county’s waterways. They include benzene, toluene, lead compounds, mercury and hexachlorobenzene – all of which are regulated as priority pollutants under the Clean Water Act. As a state, Delaware ranks seventh nationally for the release of these toxicants into water.

Richard Di Giulio heads the Duke Superfund Basic Research Center. He studies the toxicology of certain Superfund chemicals that can leach into water and pose environmental and human health risks.
tel: (919) 613-8024: e: richd@duke.edu

Research focus: Environmental toxicology. Freshwater and estuarine pollution. Fish biology. Cancer biology. Special emphasis of his work is the elucidation of mechanisms of exposure and toxicity in humans and ecosystems to particular Superfund chemicals selected based upon their potential significance with respect to reproductive and developmental effects.

David Hinton studies the causes and effects of environmental contaminants on ecosystem health, particularly on fish. He has bred a strain of guppy-like Medaka fish that are highly sensitive to contaminants and can be used as sentinels to detect water quality problems in urban drinking water.
tel: (919) 613-8038: e: dhinton@duke.edu

Research focus: Mechanistic and integrative understanding of the manner in which environmental contaminants exert their effects. Pathobiology and toxiopathology of persistent environmental contaminants in fishes. Deciphering deleterious effects and establishing causal linkages.

Some of Hinton’s specially bred Medaka sentinel fish have been sent to Orange County, Calif., where they are being use to evaluate the safety of its drinking water. Any hints of lesions on or in their tiny bodies may hint of unseen toxic agents.

Joseph Ramus studies the impact of nitrogen pollution from animal and human waste on estuarine and coastal marine health.
tel:(252) 504-7617 : e: jramus@duke.edu

Research focus: Algal ecological physiology, especially photosynthesis; estuarine and coastal ocean productivity; wastewater management; marine ecology.

As more land in coastal regions is cleared for suburbia or converted into intensive agricultural operations, water quality is suffering downriver, in environmentally sensitive estuaries and coastal waters, Ramus says. With "more and more land use change, more water comes off the watershed and it comes off faster," Ramus says. “One major consequence of this is that excess nitrogen runoff from automobile emissions, animal wastes and fertilizers enters the water, where it nurtures algae growth that robs the water of oxygen and promotes fish kills.”

Kenneth Reckhow is director of the Center for the Analysis and Prediction of River Basin Environmental Systems.
tel:(919) 613-8026: e: reckhow@duke.edu

Research focus: Reckhow is an expert on water quality assessment and management, risk assessment, water quality modeling and decision analysis.

Recent work by Reckhow and his research team has focused on the assessment of nonpoint source pollution on surface water quality and the development of "Total Maximum Daily Loads" (TMDLs). One current project involves the modeling and assessment of allowable nitrogen loads to the Neuse River estuary in North Carolina in order to achieve compliance with the chlorophyll standard. Reckhow was recently chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee assessing the scientific basis of the EPA TMDL program.

Curtis Richardson studies the impact of nutrient-rich runoff and water diversion on the region’s plant and animal populations.
tel: (919) 613-8006 : e: curtr@duke.edu

Research focus: Wetlands ecology, biogeochemistry, soil science. For 15 years, Richardson and his team at the Duke University Wetland Center have studied the impact of water diversion and phosphorus enrichment on the Everglades’ plant and animal populations. He’s skeptical of federal plans to restore the ecosystem by engineering new surface and underground reservoirs.

“A careful reading of the proposed plans by the Corps of Engineers will find precious little ecological understanding of how the Everglades will function or respond to these massive water alterations,” he says. “But a lot of information on the plan is given on how it will reroute water and provide water supplies to population centers and agriculture.”