(Press-News.org) Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science has been awarded a $700,000 grant from the United States Environmental Protection Agency Gulf of America Division to support a novel research project aimed at advancing water quality monitoring in one of Florida’s most critical freshwater ecosystems.
Led by Natalia Malina, Ph.D., principal investigator and an assistant professor in FAU’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry within the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, the three-year project titled, “Developing an Approach for Monitoring of Emerging Contaminant Phototransformation in Freshwater Lakes,” will focus on understanding how common contaminants – such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals and personal care products – change after being released into freshwater environments.
These substances often undergo phototransformation, breaking down and forming new chemical products when exposed to sunlight in surface water. Alarmingly, these new products are frequently more persistent or more toxic than their original compounds.
“Lake Okeechobee is not just Florida’s largest freshwater reservoir; it serves as a vital resource for millions of people and supports the ecosystems that surround it,” said Malina. “This funding will allow us to develop a much-needed approach to monitor not only which contaminants are present in the lake water, but how they transform over time and space. These transformation products are often of greater environmental and health concerns than the original chemicals, and most current monitoring programs don’t account for the transformation processes. Our work will help close that gap.”
Over the course of the project, Malina’s team will deploy passive sampling devices across eight stations throughout Lake Okeechobee to capture seasonal and annual variations in contamination. The research will also incorporate cutting-edge chemical analysis, including carbon isotope ratio measurements, to determine degradation processes and identify which phototransformation mechanisms are occurring in real-time. This will enable researchers to predict which contaminants are likely forming dangerous byproducts – all without the need for complex screening of unknown compounds.
This research comes at a critical time, as water systems throughout the U.S., particularly in regions impacted by agricultural runoff and urbanization, face increasing pressure from “emerging contaminants.” These include a wide range of chemicals that enter waterways through farming, industry, household use and wastewater. While some of these compounds are regulated, many are not, and their transformation products are often invisible to standard monitoring tools.
“Current environmental monitoring frameworks are simply not designed to track what happens to contaminants after they enter the water,” Malina said. “With our new approach, we’ll be able to link the presence of certain compounds to specific transformation mechanisms, and from there, assess their potential environmental and health risks. Our findings can help guide the development of future regulations that consider the risks associated with the contaminant transformation process in aquatic ecosystems.”
Lake Okeechobee, covering more than 730 square miles in southern Florida, serves as a crucial water source for agriculture, municipalities and natural ecosystems including the Everglades. It is a Class I Potable Water Supply and is a source of water for approximately 8 million people. As such, maintaining the lake’s water quality is a public health and environmental priority.
Malina’s project will generate detailed data on contaminant concentrations, their seasonal patterns and how they evolve under environmental conditions – a dataset that could prove invaluable for scientists, regulators and policymakers alike.
“This vital grant from the EPA allows us to address a critical, and often invisible, threat to our water systems, and empowers innovative, solution-driven science that addresses real-world challenges,” said Valery E. Forbes, Ph.D., dean of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. “Dr. Malina’s project fills a critical gap in how we detect and monitor chemical pollutants in our water systems – an issue with far-reaching implications. The insights gained will not only benefit Florida but also provide a scalable model for communities across the country. This is impactful science –advancing environmental protection, safeguarding public health and helping to ensure a sustainable future for clean water.”
In addition to advancing scientific understanding, the project will also offer hands-on research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students and contribute to the development of new tools and models that can be used by environmental agencies at both the state and national levels.
With fieldwork scheduled to begin this month and continuing through 2028, the project promises to deliver new insights into the fate of emerging contaminants and inform smarter, more adaptive strategies for managing freshwater resources in a rapidly changing world.
- FAU -
About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, Florida Atlantic serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the Southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, Florida Atlantic embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. Florida Atlantic is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report, and holds the designation of “R1: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production” by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Florida Atlantic shares this status with less than 5% of the nearly 4,000 universities in the United States. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.
END
For years, scientists at Washington State University’s Puyallup Research & Extension Center have been working to untangle a mystery: Why do coho salmon in Puget Sound creeks seem to suffocate after rainstorms—rising to the surface, gaping, and swimming in circles before dying?
In 2018, the die-offs were linked to bits of car tires shed by friction and washed into the stormwater runoff. In 2020, researchers zeroed in on one particular chemical culprit, a tire preservative known as 6PPD.
Now, research led by WSU PhD student Stephanie ...
Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) are gaining attention as a safer and more affordable alternative to lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). While LIBs remain the most widely used energy storage technology, they come with safety risks due to their reliance on flammable organic electrolytes. In contrast, aqueous ZIBs use water-based electrolytes, making them non-flammable, environment friendly, and more affordable. Unfortunately, during charging and discharging, zinc-anodes in ZIBs undergo repeated plating and stripping that can trigger undesirable side reactions and sharp dendrite formation. This severely impacts their ...
The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) announced today that it has exceeded the university’s goal of raising more than $500 million through its largest fundraising effort in university history, Be Bold: A Campaign for Our Future.
The ambitious campaign aimed to accelerate student success, advance research excellence and expand the university’s community impact. First conceived in 2017 and set to run for 10 years alongside the university’s strategic plan, the Be Bold campaign garnered support from more than 60,000 ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists from the Illinois Natural History Survey and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources have updated the state conservation status ranks, or S-ranks, of threatened and endangered plants in Illinois. The update includes some plants not recorded in the state for decades and finds many that, while still threatened, are doing better than previously thought.
Their findings are detailed in the Natural Areas Journal.
The 331 plants on the list are as fascinating as they are rare, said Brian Charles, an INHS scientific specialist in botany who led the multiyear effort. They include ...
DARIEN, IL – The American Academy of Sleep Medicine is accepting abstracts and innovation award entries as part of Sleep Medicine Disruptors 2025, which will be held in-person in Austin, Texas, and livestreamed Friday and Saturday, Nov. 14-15.
This biennial event attracts clinicians, scientists, technology developers, start-up founders, venture capitalists, and other health care innovators. Speakers will explore technology innovation, artificial intelligence, and other disruptions that are poised to change the landscape of sleep health, patient care, and health care delivery. ...
Hamilton, ON (August 13, 2025) --- A study published in Nature Biotechnology reveals a powerful new use for artificial intelligence: designing small, drug-like molecules that can stick to and break down harmful proteins in the body — even when scientists don’t know what those proteins look like. The breakthrough could lead to new treatments for diseases that have long resisted traditional drug development, including certain cancers, brain disorders, and viral infections.
The study was published on August 13, 2025 by a multi-institutional team of researchers from McMaster University, Duke University, and Cornell University. The AI tool, called PepMLM, ...
One of the best places to study stars is inside “open clusters”, which are groups of stars that formed together from the same material and are bound together through gravity.
Open clusters act as laboratories, showing how stars of different masses and ages behave. At the same time, some stars known as “variable stars”, regularly change in brightness, and their flickers and pulses help scientists learn about the physics inside stars and about the wider galaxy.
Until now, astronomers studied clusters and variable stars separately, and ...
Popular generative AI web browser assistants are collecting and sharing sensitive user data, such as medical records and social security numbers, without adequate safeguards, finds a new study led by researchers from UCL and Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria.
The study, which will be presented and published as part of the USENIX Security Symposium, is the first large-scale analysis of generative AI browser assistants and privacy. It uncovered widespread tracking, profiling, and personalisation ...
Traditional veterinary practices utilize rectal measurements to assess body temperature, but this method is stressful and does not capture continuous changes in body temperature. Fortunately, recent advancements have introduced infrared thermography, which can non-invasively measure body temperatures. However, it is still difficult to continuously monitor temperature changes over time with this method. Moreso, parts of the image data are set manually, which can cause data variations due to setting positions. These drawbacks ...
How many ads do you see on social media? It might be more than you realize. Scientists studying how ads work on Instagram-style social media have found that people are not as good at spotting them as they think. If people recognized ads, they usually ignored them - but some, designed to blend in with your friends’ posts, flew under the radar.
“We wanted to understand how ads are really experienced in daily scrolling — beyond what people say they notice, to what they actually process,” said Maike Hübner, PhD candidate at the University ...
