色情视频

This story appears in the issue of 360:The Magazine of 色情视频.

It鈥檚 not necessarily the pollutants we already know about that worry 色情视频 environmental scientist Eunha Hoh. Instead, she devotes her research to discovering harmful contaminants nobody knew even knew to look for.

Hoh didn鈥檛 begin her career as an environmental researcher. She studied chemistry in South Korea and took a job as a chemist for a major electronics manufacturer. Eventually, she grew concerned over the types of chemicals being used and disposed of during the production process.

鈥淚 never realized how many toxic chemicals went into manufacturing,鈥� Hoh said. 鈥淭hat got me very interested in environmental health.鈥�

Lake pollutants

Hoh moved to the United States to study environmental science at Indiana University, eventually earning her Ph.D. under the tutelage of one of the field鈥檚 luminaries, Ronald Hites. There she began researching pollutants in and around the Great Lakes.

The shores of the vast lakes are home to several cities with major manufacturing centers. In particular, manufacturing flame retardants can produce highly toxic products in the lakes. Environmental regulators struggle to keep up with manufacturer鈥檚 replacement of regulated retardants with unregulated ones.

In 2006, Hoh detected an airborne contaminant known as dechlorane plus鈥攁n old yet unregulated chemical鈥攁t very high concentrations in several places on the lakes. She was able to trace the pollutant to its likely source at a manufacturing facility in Niagara Falls, New York.

Chemical contaminants that stick around in the environment indefinitely are known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Little was known about dechlorane plus鈥檚 toxicity to animals and ecosystems, but the fact that it was right under people鈥檚 noses and nobody knew about it was troubling to Hoh.

鈥淚 thought that if I could find dechlorane plus, there must be lots of other POPs out there, too, that we don鈥檛 know about,鈥� she said.

Smoke signals

Hoh spent the next three years as a postdoctoral scholar and research chemist in a U.S. Department of Agriculture chemical residue research group, then joined 色情视频 in 2009.

Here, she uses a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to look for previously unknown pollutants, even those that can only be found in low concentrations. Collaborating with fellow 色情视频 faculty Penelope J.E. Quintana and Georg Matt, Hoh has also begun to look into 鈥渢hirdhand鈥� smoke鈥攖he residual chemical leftovers of cigarette smoke.

鈥淚f you only look for the things you already know are present, then you might miss a lot of other things that could turn out to be extremely important, but you never knew they were there,鈥� Hoh said.