Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

Prior to the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, DDT was a widely used insecticide in the United States. The nation's largest manufacturer of DDT was located in Southern California and for decades engaged in unregulated waste disposal to the Ocean, leading to the Nation's only continental shelf Superfund site. In this seminar I will talk about a new chapter in this saga based on offshore disposal of bulk DDT manufacturing waste, the spread of which went unnoticed for decades, which potentially contaminates hundreds of square kilometers of deep seafloor. I will share insights gained through geochemical and microbiological investigations along with offshoots to explore the broader topic of offshore waste disposal as well as the role of science communication in reinvigorating this topic.