Science Cafe NH is tonight, about arsenic in our water, food and environment

Science Cafe NH is on tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Concord's Barley House restaurant. As I mentioned in my Telegraph column Monday, it's about arsenic in the environment - mostly due to Mother Nature, or should I say Mother Geology.

It's free, fun and air conditioned. See you there!

These are the panelists, to whet your appetite.

Paul Susca, New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, supervises NHDES’s Drinking Water Source Protection Program, and has been with the program for 17 years. The program works to protect public water supply sources and groundwater resources, providing technical and financial assistance to public water systems and municipalities, as well as partnering with other environmental programs and outside organizations.

Joe Ayotte, U.S. Geological Survey, has worked as a hydrologist with the US Geological Survey for 24 years and has spent much of that time studying water quality issues in the region and nationally. He has published many articles related to arsenic in groundwater in New England and continues to conduct research related to arsenic in private wells. He was a 2010 recipient of the USEPA Environmental Merit Award based on his work related to arsenic in groundwater.

Brian Jackson, Dartmouth College, Superfund Research Program, studies forms and spatial distributions of trace metals found in the environment and in biological samples. At Dartmouth and as part of the Superfund Research Program, Brian has developed innovative laboratory techniques to analyze metals. Specifically, he investigates samples from soil solutions and biological tissues using “hyphenated separation techniques,” which detect and separate forms of metals that are harmful to humans.