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Emerging Contaminants, Microplastics, and PFAS with Dr Bob Symons
282 Plays4 months ago
Bob Symons serves as the Regional Technical Manager for Eurofins Environment Testing Australia & Aotearoa New Zealand, where he oversees contaminants of emerging concern and contributes to the PFAS global peer group.
Holding a Ph.D. in Environmental Analytical Chemistry from La Trobe University and an undergraduate degree from Victoria University in Melbourne, Bob brings a wealth of academic expertise to his role. He has previously served as a member of the NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia) Life Sciences Accreditation Advisory Committee and currently acts as a Technical Assessor for ISO/IEC 17025 as well as a committee member of ALGA's special interest group on Emerging Contaminants.
Bob's research pursuits have primarily focused on the analysis of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), encompassing dioxins, dioxin-like PCBs, PBDEs, PPCPs, and PFAS, employing advanced mass spectrometric techniques. Notably, he has played a pivotal role in pioneering commercial microplastics analytical methodologies within Australia, underscoring his commitment to advancing environmental testing capabilities.
In this episode you’ll learn about emerging contaminants such as microplastics and PFAS. Shonelle and Bob also discuss rising concerns surrounding environmental waste from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, as well as the safe disposal of electronics, including smartphones, lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicle batteries.
Bob shares his advice to those working in local council to ask lots of questions when working to manage contaminated land, and where needed to employ the help of laboratories like Eurofins Emerging Contaminants Laboratory or the Australian Laboratory for Emerging Contaminants at the University of Melbourne.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Contamination Station, safer environment together, a New South Wales EPA funded podcast. In these episodes, you'll hear from those working to implement contaminated land policies and procedures at the local level by sharing our stories, frustrations, wins and losses. Our aim is for this podcast to become a repository of information that will support those currently working to combat contaminated land and for those yet to come.
Emerging Contaminants with Dr. Bob Simmons
00:00:30
Speaker
In today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Bob Simmons, who serves as the regional technical manager for Eurofins Environment Testing Australia and New Zealand, where he oversees contaminants of emerging concern and contributes to PFAS Global Peer Group. Holding a PhD in environmental analytical chemistry from La Trobe University and an undergraduate degree from Victoria University in Melbourne, Bob brings a wealth of academic expertise to his role.
00:00:57
Speaker
Bob's research pursuits have primarily focused on the analysis of persistent organic pollutants. He has played a pivotal role in pioneering commercial microplastics and the analytical methodologies used within Australia. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and the guest as individuals and do not necessarily reflect those of the New South Wales EPA or any other organisation.
Understanding POPs
00:01:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of Contamination Station, an EPA-funded podcast. I'm your host, Chanel Gleason-Willie, and our guest today is Dr. Bob Simmons. Hi, Bob. Thanks for your time. How are you going? Chanel, thanks very much, and it's a pleasure to be with you. So you've had quite an extensive career and a very impactful one with a focus on persistent organic pollutants. Can you tell me a bit more about the POPs you've worked with and what you've learnt about them?
00:01:51
Speaker
POPs are a United Nations Environment Program initiative, often called the Stockholm Convention, and POPs have to fulfil four criteria. So they have to be persistent, they have to be biotuitive,
00:02:07
Speaker
They have to be toxic to humans and the environment and they have to be susceptible to long range atmospheric transport. So the early, what we call the dirty dozen were a list of organochlorine pesticides
00:02:22
Speaker
that were used back last century, so things like DDT, Dildron, and so forth, which are now banned, but also dioxins and dioxin-like
Legacy of Agricultural Chemicals
00:02:33
Speaker
PCBs. So I got involved when I was working for a company that had a contamination issue and used to work with the only facility in the Southern Hemisphere doing pops and ulcers, and that was in Wellington, New Zealand.
00:02:47
Speaker
So, I managed to get a job there and that's when I first started analysing these types of pollutants in environmental samples as part of the New Zealand Government's initiative for the Stockman Convention.
00:03:05
Speaker
I was there for about six years and then came back to Australia where I set up Australia's docs and analysis unit as part of the Australian government. So yes, I've been involved ever since then and things have changed a little bit. So we've added a lot of chemicals to that Stockholm Convention and probably talk about some of those emerging contaminants in this session.
00:03:29
Speaker
So a lot of those I've heard about before and they're related to agricultural chemicals or industrial processes. So what I guess in layman's terms, what are the general industries that we would have seen in the past creating or using these chemicals and then causing their pollutants?
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, you're very right there. A lot of the organochlorine pesticides were used in agriculture back last century. They had some pretty interesting ways of doing it. Sometimes they would dig a hole in the ground, fill it up with some of these chemicals, and then run the cattle or the sheep through those dips. So when they'd finished dipping it, they just covered over those holes.
00:04:16
Speaker
that left a legacy that we have today because they were never planned or never put on to the sites. So there was no evidence apart from some of the old timers memories. Yeah, we put dips here or we put dips there or what have you. So it was a bit of a discovery to us. So that's the legacy that we've had to uncover, especially when we're
Innovative Detection Methods
00:04:42
Speaker
rezoning that land for residential purposes where there might be young kids involved. Yeah and it's actually a question that came up through the CRCB program to the Council Contaminated Land Capacity Building Program. Quite a lot in that as you said you know these dips were on rural properties and quite often even these days that those properties haven't been redeveloped so the question was always put to us well how do we know where they are and
00:05:09
Speaker
should we be doing something about it proactively or waiting until some point in future the land gets rezoned and that's when the testing occurs. So that was always an interesting question to answer and I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on that.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, look, it's provided some challenges and I think it was the Queensland State Government that developed sniffer dogs. So like you see at the airports with the dogs that are trained to look for drugs or food or what have you, they've managed to train these dogs.
00:05:46
Speaker
to actually smell out the old dips. So rather than digging holes everywhere, they use these dogs, which has been very, very effective. So that was something that makes life a little bit easier. But I think there's been some programs where new roads have been built. So when they've been putting those roads through rural properties, they've had to dig into the ground. So they send
00:06:13
Speaker
those samples back to laboratories like urethans and we do the analysis to make sure that there's none of these contaminants in the soil.
00:06:22
Speaker
That's very innovative with the dogs. I actually hadn't heard about that before, so I'm very pleased to hear about that. It was always something that plagued me was if there's no infrastructure remaining from the dips or any area that these chemicals might have been used, then yeah, you do end up just digging a whole stack of holes and it's extremely expensive to try and figure out where and how far the contamination goes. That is very innovative. I like that.
00:06:51
Speaker
Well, the Australian government's also got a program called the National Residue Program, where they test the fat of animals that are being exported to make sure that these residues are not above certain levels. And there's been lots of cases certainly last century, not so much these days, but they still do this monitoring. So there's sort of protection of our trade as well through the Australian government's agriculture and forestry and fisheries.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yes, actually, I have come across that with our own cattle. The paperwork we have to fill in does mention. Putting two or two together now as to why those questions are being asked.
Challenges in Microplastic Analysis
00:07:32
Speaker
Moving on now, you've also pioneered commercial microplastic analytical methodologies in Australia. What are some of the challenges involved with that work?
00:07:41
Speaker
Well, maybe it's very timely because we were actually awarded an Excellence Award by the National Association of Testing Authorities just this week for the work that we've done on microplastics. But I think the big thing with microplastics is they're everywhere. They're in cosmetics, they're in the food, they're in the drink.
00:08:02
Speaker
We've managed to work with the University of Melbourne and also the University of Auckland in New Zealand. So the research is there. I've been very interested in looking at microplastics, but Eurofence has got five laboratories around the world, one in Spain,
00:08:18
Speaker
one in Norway, one in Hungary, and one in West Sacramento in the US. So we collaborate with those guys, but we're the first laboratory to be accredited to measure microplastics in water. So it's certainly very challenging. And the biggest challenge really is to get clean water to analyze. We find it everywhere.
00:08:42
Speaker
Sorry, get clean water, did you say? Clean water, yeah. Even when we did a study where we went to supermarkets and bought commercial bottles of water and we measured the water and we found microplastics in that bottle of water. We spent so much time in the lab, so we've got a separate lab. It's got its own air conditioning system. We have, we only can wear cotton
00:09:10
Speaker
lab coats in the lab. We're trying to remove as much plastic as possible. And yeah, we've just finished a big project with the Mindaroo Foundation. So that's Twiggy Forest's philanthropic organization where they looked at microplastics in deposition in Ottawa, in Canada. So they were looking at snow
00:09:32
Speaker
rainfall and dust. So it was part of a United Nations study that the Mini-Roo Foundation were attending and so we did some work with that. So it's certainly very interesting. We've done microplastics in tea bags and microplastics in table salts and
00:09:50
Speaker
microplastics, and I suppose for your listeners, it's one of the things that occurs in biosolids. So when you wash clothing, and a lot of our clothing these days is synthetic, those fibers come off and they go into, you know, through the washing machine and down into the serious treatment plants, and then it gets accumulated in the biosolids.
00:10:16
Speaker
about 99% stays in the basalt. It's only a small amount passes through, and then the basalt is depending on what happens with that. Sometimes it's brought to forest land or agricultural land, so there's the
00:10:32
Speaker
potential that it could get back into the food chain and something that we will eat. The research is still, I'm a chemist. I should have said that from the get-go. I'm a chemist. The toxicologists are really battling on what the health effects are of these microplastics.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yeah. Because I guess then once they're applied through these effluent irrigation areas, they might be washed back into local rivers. And I guess that's how the cycle continues. Yes. Yeah. So you just told us about a lot of what you'd be working on, but are there any case studies that you can share with us in more detail?
00:11:11
Speaker
We did a really interesting study with an ophthalologist from the University of Singapore where we did microplastics in eye drops. So if you've got
00:11:23
Speaker
or if you take fire drops, you'll notice that they're in plastic, little plastic bowls. So I think everything's in plastic these days. That's certainly the, we were able to find microplastics in the little fire drops. I suppose that was an interesting one, but we've got some work with our colleagues overseas looking at microplastics in cosmetics. So looking at different,
00:11:52
Speaker
Most of the cosmetics, there's been a voluntary ban in Australia for things like beads and microbeads in some scrubs and some cosmetics. But now there's been extra work done on the fact that microplastics can actually answer through the skin. So by putting stuff on your skin, there's potential that it can actually go through the skin. And I should have said from the get-go that
00:12:20
Speaker
Microplastics are defined as anything below five millimeters down to one micrometer or one micron. So below one micron we call nanoplastics. So there's a whole different area of nomenclature when it comes to microplastics. So we're just concentrating on the
00:12:43
Speaker
the one micron up to five millimetre range. We don't yet have the equipment to measure in the nanoplastics area, but that's another area of research. So, and I know you're a chemist, but that you do work with toxicologists. So is there any thinking or I guess any research that's been done which is conclusive as to what sorts of impacts the microplastics have on the human body?
00:13:11
Speaker
No. Short answer, same time. There's not all the way out there. Topology takes a long time to look at both acute and chronic effects. I know there's lots of people doing research in this particular area, and that's really the realm of
00:13:30
Speaker
universities and other research institutions. We're a commercial lab. We do have a small R&D budget for doing these type of things. It's turned from an R&D project into mainstream analysis for us. There's lots of people that require or that want to know. They want to be proactive. I think everyone
00:13:55
Speaker
Everyone deals with plastics every day, and I think it's become an issue for them to understand a little bit more and be proactive, I guess, in seeing whether their products have microplastics in
The PFAS Discussion
00:14:07
Speaker
them or not. So we had a call yesterday morning, actually, and I won't say who it was from, but a very large American coffee distributor. So they
00:14:19
Speaker
They're very interested in what happens with their coffee bags and what happens with their coffee cups, their disposable coffee cups. So when it's disposed into the environment, does it shed microplastics and other contaminants? So, you know, even the big companies are aware. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned the Eurofins emerging contaminants laboratory. Can you tell me a bit more about the primary focus of that laboratory and what do
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, there's a lot of magic contaminants out there. I suppose the major one is PFAS. So the pure and polyfluoro alcohol substances that was in the news a week or so back in the major media where there was always reports about the levels of these compounds in our drinking water. So they're often called forever chemicals because they persist for a long time.
00:15:15
Speaker
They were manufactured back in the 1930s, and it really wasn't until we were able to use some advanced analytical instrumentation this century that we're able to detect these contaminants. So there is a list of emerging contaminants that people at the US EPA put out. Monoplastics is one of those. Another one is the pharmaceutical and personal care products.
00:15:41
Speaker
So a lot of the pharmaceuticals that you may ingest every day, there's a large percentage that goes straight through the body and that ends up in the environment. And like you said before, they could end up in rivers and streams and there's been instances where certain fish have been accumulate these compounds and have
00:16:07
Speaker
impacts on either their sex life or their ability to survive in that sort of environment. So it's important that we monitor for these type of compounds.
00:16:19
Speaker
I'm lucky. I don't actually work in the lab these days. As soon as I put a white coat on, they tend to run when I'm coming near the lab. But we've got some really good people that do the analytical work. And there's some very advanced techniques that they use to measure these compounds really at very low concentrations. So we're talking about
00:16:40
Speaker
parts per trillion or parts per billion levels. So a drop in many, many Olympic sized swimming pools and that's what we're looking at. Okay, wow. How old is the Eurofins emerging contaminants laboratory? Yeah, that's a very good question. We were an Australian owned company and we got bought by Eurofins in 2012.
00:17:02
Speaker
So, Eurofens is 62,000 people worldwide. So, we've got over 900 laboratories scattered all over the globe. And I'm sitting in the Sydney campus at the moment, which has got both the environment and food and clinical and the pharma people.
00:17:23
Speaker
but we were established Midget Contaminants Lab about five years ago. Okay. And that was really on the basis of demand for the analysis of these type of contaminants. Yeah, the reason I asked was because I was wondering if there was any other high impact projects or studies that the labs conducted that have had a positive environmental impact or outcome, I guess that you've seen the end result and maybe Alison might have even heard about.
00:17:50
Speaker
No, not the lock. I mean...
00:17:55
Speaker
We do work for a lot of EPAs, a lot of that. We don't really know where the samples have come from. So sometimes they'll send us in samples and we'll just do the analysis and send them back the results and then they will do the interpretation of what impacts these results have had. So we try and do our best to understand what our clients are doing. But
00:18:23
Speaker
often it's more confidential or they'd like to keep the information to themselves before it's about them. I guess a lot of it's very sensitive as well.
Contamination at Airports and Remediation
00:18:34
Speaker
So it's probably something that they should distribute where we have to hold our clients' data in a confidential manner.
00:18:45
Speaker
Yeah, of course. So how can local councils leverage Eurofin's research and findings to maybe develop some effective long-term strategies for contaminated land management and remediation at the local level?
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, look, we don't work directly with local councils. That's more the consultants. But we've done and I know we've done some projects up your way with in Tamworth with a local airport there. So a lot of the and what I said before about PFAS while it's everywhere, one of the
00:19:17
Speaker
the most common uses was in firefighting foam. They used to use that back in the late 90s and early this century in practice. It's contaminated the groundwater, so in a lot of instances, especially around airports and so forth. We've tested the water for
00:19:40
Speaker
for those or the groundwater, for those sites to make sure that it hasn't extended into areas where the council people might, or where people are living, they might be extracting that for their human consumption. So we make sure that it's within the safe drinking water limits.
00:20:00
Speaker
I guess the airport issue is an interesting one, but it's definitely not unique to airports. But where you have had firefighting foam dispersed via drainage channels or overland flow or something like that, and you end up with large contaminated areas with very, very low quantities, I guess
00:20:22
Speaker
with low concentrations. So trying to clean that up, if it is marginally over the safe limits, even these days, it's still a big challenge and quite often, in a lot of cases, it's cost prohibitive. So it's definitely an interesting space to watch in terms of not just the analysis, but I guess the cleanup afterwards.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, look, that's a very good point. And the US EPA have just announced the first legally enforceable limits for PFAS in water. But they've also allocated a billion US dollars per year over the next few years to assist with that cleanup operation. So it's an active area of research and we do provide some analytical support for
00:21:13
Speaker
people doing that sort of remediation. There's some very good Australian inventions that have been used in Australia, but also worldwide.
Collaborative Research Efforts
00:21:24
Speaker
So there's a few people in that space. And I was only talking to some researchers this morning that have got a project where they're looking at cleaning up water, like you're saying, in very low concentrations, because it is very cost prohibitive. So they're trying to do it to get the biggest bang for their buck.
00:21:43
Speaker
There's also a laboratory out of the University of Melbourne, the Australian Laboratory for Immersion Contaminants, or ALIC. What can you tell us about this lab and how it differs from the Immersion Contaminants Lab at Eurofins?
00:21:57
Speaker
Well, it's a research facility. It's headed up by Dr. Brad Clark, and Eurofans is a sponsor of Alec. So we're very proud to be part of that system, but it was the earlier research, micro-classics research that I spoke about. That was a University of Melbourne master's student, and he's now doing a PhD.
00:22:23
Speaker
So Subaru has done most of that research into the bottled water that I spoke about. And that's the sort of that's and we work. And as I said, the guys at the University of Melbourne are leading, I suppose, Australia in that particular area. As I said, we are a commercial lab. We have a little bit of research, but the research really should be done by the university. So yes, we let them do what they're good at and we do what we think we're good at.
00:22:53
Speaker
So with contaminants, we've spoken a bit about PFAS and a bit about microplastics in the environment. Are there any other emerging trends in contaminants that you believe will become significant environmental concerns in the future?
00:23:08
Speaker
Well, I think that the pharmaceutical and personal care products is certainly something that is going to be an issue going forward. We noted a bit of an increase in a compound called fluoroxetine, which is the active ingredient in Prozac.
00:23:25
Speaker
during the COVID period. So that was a lot of people, I guess, taking antidepressants to help them through that particular pandemic. There was, and I know Brad's done a lot of work with flame retardants. So flame retardants are put into clothing, put into a lot of material like televisions and video recorders.
00:23:52
Speaker
sort of modern electronics to make sure they don't burn, but these compounds actually become a pop. You know, they're persistent, they're biocumulative, they're toxic, and they go through this long range atmospheric transport. And when I was part of the Australian government, we did a study on breast milk. So, human breast milk, and looked at these flagrands I haven't seen in breast milk, and the levels were
00:24:22
Speaker
quite high, given that Australia really is... We don't have any manufacturing of these type of chemicals. We're a long way away from where that is.
E-waste and Emerging Contaminants
00:24:34
Speaker
And there's little anti-hemispheric shifting of pollutants. Everything's sort of generated in the Southern Hemisphere, pretty much stays in the Southern Hemisphere and the same in the Northern Hemisphere. But the levels in human and others' milk
00:24:47
Speaker
were lower than in Europe, but nevertheless, they were relatively high. That was a project that we did with the University of Queensland.
00:24:56
Speaker
Okay. And we're just thinking about that. So with the flame retardants, I guess these might be the same chemicals that we're going to be seeing in fairly large quantities at, for instance, some of their renewable energy projects, like the best battery energy storage systems, where they have the flame retardants built into each of the best units. So yeah, we could be seeing quite a bit more quantity of these entering New South Wales.
00:25:26
Speaker
You've just touched on one of my favourite topics. E-waste is something that we need to take very seriously. I heard only this morning about the fire brigade being concerned about fires from lithium-ion batteries. These type of consumer products that
00:25:48
Speaker
And I think that people use every day. I'm looking at my desk at the moment. I've probably got lithium ion batteries all over the place. But when it comes to their end of life, how do we recycle them properly without
00:26:03
Speaker
causing further environmental damage. So we need to think about that. Lithium is actually one of the emerging contaminants that is on the US EPA's list, as well as other rare earth metals that are in our smartphones and our modern electronics that we use every day. So yeah, certainly e-waste and the safe disposable of those products should be looked at a little bit further because we're
00:26:33
Speaker
We're getting now to a stage where things like electric vehicles are now coming to end of life. Most electric vehicle batteries have got about a lifetime of about eight years. So I'm going to end up with a time where we're going to have to get serious about safely disposing of those.
00:26:52
Speaker
Or recycling. Or recycling, yeah. I guess not to do with disposal, but I had a personally interesting experience with an iron battery. I was travelling along the New England Highway a couple of weeks back and smelled this very funny smell. I was behind a car towing a caravan and
00:27:14
Speaker
happened to notice that there was smoke coming out of the caravan. And after much waving and horn tooting, I finally managed to get the driver to pull over. And he was absolutely flabbergasted. He said his mirrors were broken, his rearview mirrors were broken or something. So he couldn't actually see the smoke coming out of his caravan, even though it was going everywhere.
00:27:37
Speaker
But as it turned out, it was actually a battery in his caravan that had caught on fire and caused the entire thing to burn down. Yeah, it was quite amazing. Well, with MO batteries again, the casing is a fluorinated polymer and the electrolytes inside are a type of PFAS.
00:28:01
Speaker
So again, it's something that not many people know and not many councils know that when they're disposing of these, they could be increasing the PFAS levels in the environment. So again, yeah, we need to be looking further at that. And I know that the
00:28:22
Speaker
Most of the EVs are very, very safe. It's when they're incorrectly charged that seems to be the issue or they're overcharged. A lot of the EV manufacturers are saying, cheap your battery between 20% and 80%.
00:28:41
Speaker
You don't really need to go to 100% or look at maybe causing a fire for overcharging. But they are very safe. Yes, they are.
00:28:59
Speaker
So what advice would you give to those dealing with these concerns? I guess around the safety, maybe disposal of e-waste at the local council level. So and trying to work to manage contaminated land. Is there any bits of advice that you could maybe impart to council officers who might be working with the local landfills, waste management facilities of maybe something to keep an eye out for or to do some more research into?
Advice for Handling Contamination Issues
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, I think the only bit of advice would be to talk to us. A lot of the times, it does get pretty complex. And if you're not in that sort of particular area of research or you're not in that particular area, you probably don't come across it until too late.
00:29:43
Speaker
So I remember this is going back probably 10 or 11 years, but there was a site where it was an old electroplating works where they were using chromium. So chromium exists in two forms. One is non-toxic and one is carcinogenic. So they need to remediate the site to make sure that it was none of the carcinogenic chromium compounds.
00:30:12
Speaker
In the electroplating works, what they, and they successfully did the remediation. There was no, when we did the testing, there was no aquarium. But on the testing bars, what they use is a foam suppressant to stop. When you're doing any hard-grown plating, you put high levels of current across the objects that are being hard-grown plated. And it produces bubbles and you can get
00:30:40
Speaker
high levels of these toxic chromium compounds. So they put a foam suppressant on to make sure it doesn't get in the environment where workers might be breathing it in. But the trouble is that that foam is made up of PFAS. So back 10 or 11 years ago when this study was done, they hadn't thought about doing PFAS analysis.
00:31:02
Speaker
So someone said, after they'd finished their remediation project, maybe you should look for PFAS. And of course, they found really high levels and they had to go back and do the site again. So I think if I was giving any advice, it's, you know, ask lots of questions. And there's labs like ourselves, or there's universities like LA that can certainly help sort of
00:31:24
Speaker
unwind some of the web of all of this stuff that could be out there. And like we're talking about lithium-ion batteries, there's probably not many people that know that lithium-ion batteries contain PFAS. No, that was news to me. Thank you so much for being my guest today, Bob. It's been an absolute pleasure. And this wraps up this episode of Contamination Station podcast. Thanks for listening.
00:31:50
Speaker
You've been listening to Contamination Station, Safer Environment Together, an EPA funded podcast hosted by Chanel Gleason Wiley. We hope you've enjoyed our chat and been inspired to continue working towards a safer environment together. We would love for you to stick around for the next episode. So keep those headphones on, grab another cuppa and settle in for more insightful stories.