Scientists using muscles as a ‘messenger’ of water quality, Ontario’s testing for chemicals in the Grand River
By studying muscles in the Grand River in Brantford, Onts, a team of scientists expects to better understand how some chemicals are affecting the environment.
Patty Gillis, an environment and climate change, a research scientist with Canada, studies aquatic contaminants with its team located in the Canada Center for Inland Waters in Burlington, Onts.
He and his team use native freshwater muscles as “messengers of water quality”, so that questions about the distribution and effects of contaminants are answered.
Muscles do not roam much. They bury themselves into sediment and filter the water through their dhal, meaning they are exposed to contaminants from water and river.
“Maybe they have come in contact with something like a drug in a metal or river that does not make them healthy. Therefore, we can quantity some of them by taking a piece of their tissue,” Gilis said.
Environment and Climate Change Canadian research scientist Patty Gillis explains how his team is using muscles to learn about the effects of chemicals in the Grand River near Brentford, Onts.
His team is taking sample on the river, under the waste water treatment scheme of the municipality. They are hoping to understand how individual chemicals and mixtures of chemicals affect various muscles species by studying their population, analyzes the stress of the mollusk and test their body for metals and chemicals.
Other teams are doing similar work by looking at other species, such as snails, birds and fish. The overall initiative is a pilot project called the Integrated Chemical Mixing Project (ICMP), studying sites in Brantford and Windsor, Onts.
Part of comprehensive effort to understand the impact of chemical contaminants
Burlington Chemist Mark Hewitt is a coordinator on the ICMP project. Hewitt, which researches complex chemical mixtures, says they “need to know about some Canadians.” Their team uses an iceberg’s analogy to describe complex mixtures, and how they have relatively less information about them.
He said, “The project is trying to understand the total iceberg with focus on unknown parts,” he said, “If we find them, there is a way for us to identify the solution of harmful effects.”
Project started after being recognized by the federal government Right to a healthy environmentHewitt said, and uses a team approach to understand the impacts on human health and environment.
If, for example, the Gillis team finds a high chemical concentration in the muscles tissue, then those results can be compared to the conclusions of other ICMP teams, to know how broad it is.
In Cernia, Hewitt said, researchers are capable of assessing the effects of heavy industry. Brentford is a great representative of other Canadian municipalities, said, “Since a municipal waste water center and it is near the agricultural sectors.”
On 23 September, CBC Hamilton took a look at the project in Brantford, where Gillis and his team set up their mobile lab at the parking lot on the way to a hiking near Mohack Street and Beach Road.
While co-up students are harmoni and senior technologist Jim Bennett measured muscles and recorded its sizes, physicist Erica Burton Drew Hemolyph, which is like blood, from samples.
Burton will then freeze the samples in a container of dry ice and the technologist Lisa will pass the hoard to the muscles, which began to dissect it.
The caught muscles were caught, so researchers had to pour their backs, carefully forced the sphere of muscles.
Gilis said that sacrificed samples are studied by several teams. They measure the stress of the animal by analyzing its hemolimphs and gills. The rest of the soft tissue is mashed and sent to chemists who determine what the contaminants are accumulated in animals.
Research scientist Patty Gillis and his team are studying muscles in the Grand River near Brentford, Onts. As part of their work, they are also assessing a broad environment. They display in a way that they collect samples of the river bed, to find out what organisms live there.
The team is also studying the environment in which they are working, including measuring the flow of the river, analyzing the acidity of the water and analysis of the samples from the river bed, to find out which of the inattentives remain there.
Next year, Gillis planned to keep muscles above the wastewater plant’s water, and an industrial area where gypsum – the main component for drywall and plaster – is produced, so its team can learn how quickly the animals are stressed and how chemicals accumulate. At the same time, other scientists will do equal experiments on fish, shrimp and snails.
“Different critics react differently to chemicals,” Gilis said. “(Probably) muscles are not very happy here, but what if all the other critics are? We want a comprehensive picture.”
“We are in the information-across the stage and then when we get the effect, we will continue to walk and try to find out what they are,” he said. “Then we hope that we will do other places in Canada as well.”
