Environmental Geochemistry

622551lollarvol9.jpg Contamination of groundwater resources with petroleum hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents is widespread in both rural and urban settings and represents one of the most urgent challenges facing environmental science. My research group is one of the first to have successfully developed and applied techniques for using compound specific stable carbon isotopes to investigate controls on the origin of these low level dissolved priority pollutants and on their transport and fate in the subsurface. Current research deals with key questions related to the subsurface distribution and behaviour of organic compounds in groundwater. In particular, can isotopes be used to differentiate and quantify sources at sites where a number of discrete spills may contribute to contamination? Can the dramatic isotopic fractionation effects involved in biodegradation of chlorinated ethenes be used to provide definitive evidence for reductive dechlorination of chlorinated hydrocarbons at field sites? Our research program continues to implement new approaches in contaminant hydrogeology including the application of hydrogen isotope analysis to identify the effects of biodegradation of aromatic hydrocarbons. Dr. Barbara Sherwood Lollar (BA - Harvard University; PhD University of Waterloo) completed a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cambridge University, UK before joining the University of Toronto in 1992. She is a Professor in Geology, cross-appointed with the Department of Chemistry, and Director of the Stable Isotope Laboratory. She currently holds the NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship based on her research on innovative techniques for tracking organic contaminants in groundwater and was the 1998 Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecturer for the National Ground Water Association and Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers (AGWSE). E-mail: bslollar@chem.utoronto.caSherwood Lollar, B. is the author of 'Environmental Geochemistry', published 2003 under ISBN 9780080443447 and ISBN 0080443443.