It’s not every day someone I know is quoted in the New York Times. In yesterday’s (Sept. 24, 2013) ScienceTimes section (p. D5), there was an article highlighting work by Lex van Geen, a geochemist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. Lex contacted the Water Survey a couple of years ago about some potential collaboration on arsenic in groundwater in central Illinois, a subject we have studied in some detail. In fact, we just received news that a National Science Foundation proposal that one of our staff (Tom Holm) is co-PI on with Lex has been funded. The research will use a new sampling technique (“freeze shoe”) to collect intact cores of aquifer material, and initial work will probably be done in Tazewell County.

The research highlighted in the Times article was published in Nature (van Geen, A., et al., 2013. Retardation of arsenic transport through a Pleistocene aquifer. Nature 501, 204–207, doi:10.1038/nature12444). A previously uncontaminated aquifer in Vietnam has seen increases in arsenic due to significant pumping, which has drawn contaminated water into the aquifer. Fortunately, the arsenic is being retarded in the subsurface, probably due to absorption onto aquifer materials.

Result of arsenic poisoning. Yuk.