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The Real work that I do

I have heard many people say that the best job to have is one that pays you for doing what you love. Much of my Ph.D. was truly that. It brought together my love of genetics, molecular biology, botany and environmental restoration.I am currently working in a field called phytoremediation which is the use of plants to remove and destroy toxic chemicals. I work with the detoxification of organic chemicals such as PCBs. My Ph.D. research was to make transgenic plants that are able to assist bacteria that can degrade PCBs and PAHs. Currently physical removal of PCB contaminated soil is the most common solution to a contaminated site. My father refers to landfilling this way, "They dig up the soil, put it somewhere else and call that a cleanup." While the "somewhere else" is usually a confined and monitored landfill rather than blowing around in someone's yard, the landfill will eventually leak and the soil will have to be moved again. Hopefully we will be able to provide an alternative to simply digging up PCB contaminated soils and landfilling them.

I am currently working on biofuel related research. Some of our field sites are on marginal land which includes brownfields - somewhat linking back to phytoremediation.

This picture shows me helping out on the Ford Phytoremediation Project a number of years back. This picture appears in a Ford Public Relations manual as well as in the Ford 2003 Annual Report. The location is the old Ford Rouge maufacturing facility, which has since been sold to a Russian company. The site is contaminated with Polycyclic Aromatic hydrocarbons-which are known to cause cancer. These compounds are naturally made when organic matter is burned without enough oxygen. At the Rouge site Operations of turning coal into coke left a layer of PAHs on the soil. You get exposure to PAHs when you eat foods that are cooked over a grill. The black residue contains PAHs. This is why char-grilled foods are said to cause cancer. The Ford Rouge phytoremediation site was demolished a few years back.

One thing that continues at Ford in dearborn is the green roof on top of the new Ford plant. This is what my Advisor, Dr. Clayton Rugh used to call "phyto-PRE-mediation", that is stopping or reducing contamination caused by excessive water flow before it even happens. The new Ford plant features many other environmental innovations and is well worth a visit.

You can learn about touring the Ford Rouge site here