Welcome to my page about mercury. My initial research looked at the historical trends of mercury deposition in Adirondack lakes. Of the 8 lakes that I studied, 5 of them have continued to accumulate mercury, even after emissions have been cut back. I correlated the increase to the ratio of the watershed area to the lake surface area. I also determined that the percent retention of mercury in the watersheds has been decreasing since 1930. I have written a paper on this work which was published in Environmental Science and Technology in the March 1, 1999 issue. The citation is as follows:

Lorey, P.; Driscoll, C.T. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1999, 33, 718-722.

My additional research had two parts. The first part involved analyzing samples from the same 8 Adirondack lakes for changes which have occurred since the last samples were taken (1982). The analysis included methylmercury as well as total mercury. The sediment cores and water samples for these 8 lakes were collected in August 1998 by myself, Dr. Charles Driscoll, Dr. Dan Engstrom and Ben Houlton.

Click to view pictures of these Lakes.
The second part of my research involved analyzing samples from some lakes in Vermont and New Hampshire. This was a joint project with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. This project is called REMAP. The samples for this project were collected from 1998 to 2000. A paper about this research can be found from the following citation: Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 2004, 23, 1172-1186.

Another paper I contributed to is here: Ecotoxicology, 14, 85-99, 2005.

Although I will not be working with Onondaga Lake, it is still being studied with regards to mercury. Some students at William and Mary have put together a nice little project discussing pollution and Onondaga Lake.

I presented my research at an EPA workshop in West Palm Beach, Florida on May 8-10, 2001 and at the AGU Spring Meeting in Boston on May 31, 2001. I passed my dissertation defense on December 4, 2001, and I also have two additional papers submitted to journals for review.

Procedure

I analyzed soil and water samples for total mercury, and for the organic form, methylmercury. The way that it is done is called Atomic Fluorescence Spectrophotometry. One of the instruments I used was a Brooks Rand Model III. Here is another view. We also used a Tekran Model 2600.


To see some pictures of the analysis set ups, go to my Analysis page.

For some good scientific humor click here



Here are some links to other sites with mercury information.

Links to other sites on the Web

U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Geological Survey #2
Agency for Toxic Substances
Environmental Protection Agency

For my Ph.D. candidacy exam I discussed the compound N,N-diethyl-m-toluamide (DEET). It is the active ingredient in many insect repellents. Here is the structure of DEET:

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