Research Project 10
| EPA Grant Number: | R828771-0-01 |
| Title: | Co-Contaminant Effects of Risk Assessment and Remediation Activities Involving Urban Sediments and Soils: Phase II |
| Investigators: | William Ball, Edward Bouwer, Allison Mackay |
| Institution: | Johns Hopkins University, University of Connecticut |
| Project Period: |
October 1, 2003 to September 30, 2004 |
| Description: |
| This research project will continue the PI's prior efforts (Research Project 4) to develop improved models of the combined effects of sorption, mass transfer, and biodegradation on contaminant fate. This work is relevant to both risk assessment and remediation at sites where sediments and soils are contaminated by organic chemicals. |
| Approach: |
| Focus will remain on organic contaminant mixtures based on chemicals know to occur at sites with toxic chemical releases, and on solids associated with locations of impact, including urban harbors and brownfields. The work will build upon prior efforts by (1) coupling our developed models for adsorption and diffusion with improved models of co-contaminant biodegradations; (2) testing the sensitivity of such models to ranges of system properties, under "exemplary" conditions of site contaminations; and (3) expanding our efforts to characterize actual soil and sediment characteristics at urban locations in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Northeastern surface water sediments , in order to assess the importance of black carbon or other constituents that cause competitive sorption effects. |
| Objectives:: |
| 1. Complete our
development of numerical modeling approaches for linking rates of
biodegradation in complex mixtures with desorption under conditions of
competitive and nonlinear sorption. 2. Expand the range of soil and sediment locations for which we experimentally test for competitive and nonlinear organic chemical sorption. |
| Supplemental Keywords: |
| toxics, organics, cleanup, restorations, hydrology, hydrogeology |