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NHEERL on the Road
Pavlodar, Kazakhstan
NHEERL Scientist Visits Kazakhstan To Review Collaborative Research Project
The EPA Office of International Activities manages a U.S. State Department-funded program to redirect the activities of former Soviet Union biological weapons scientists toward peaceful ends. Richard Devereux, a research microbiologist at NHEERL's Gulf Ecology Division, along with scientists from NRMRL-Cincinnati conducted site visits September 4-15, 2008, to evaluate progress, facilities, and methods for a project that is investigating microbiological approaches to mitigate mercury-contaminated groundwater. Scientists in Kazakhstan are beginning bench-scale pilot tests to examine the performance of bacteria they isolated that sequester or precipitate mercury from solution. The ORD team will visit the Institute of Microbiology and Virology in Almaty and the chemical manufacturing complex near Pavlodar where the contamination occurs.
GED Scientist To Assess Progress at BCRP Program Sites in Kazakhstan
Devereux, a research biologist with the NHEERL Gulf Ecology Division's (GED's) Ecosystem Dynamics and Effects Branch, and Wendy Davis-Hoover of NRML-Cincinnati will travel to Kazakhstan, October 1-8, 2009, to assess the progress on a Bio-Chem Redirect Program (BCRP) project. These two ORD scientists provide technical oversight of the project as part of the U.S. Department of State efforts to retrain former U.S.S.R. biological weapons scientists. This BCRP project investigates microbiological treatment as a means to mitigate mercury-contaminated groundwater in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan. Two approaches are under investigation, one using aerobic bacteria and another using anaerobic bacteria. Bacteria were isolated from the contaminated site and studied to determine how well they might work to remove mercury from the flow of groundwater in an engineered below-ground system. The project has progressed to the planning of trial field experiments that will begin to be implemented later this year.
Visits will be made to the Almaty Institute of Microbiology and Virology and the Almaty Institute of Power Engineering, where much of the analytical work is taking place, to assess progress, procedures, and facilities associated with the project. A laboratory that is being refurbished and instrumented at the chemical plant in Pavlodar where the contamination occurs will be evaluated. Reviews will be conducted in both Almaty and Pavlodar of progress, data quality, and the available information used to develop the experimental design of the field experiment, including field site selection.