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OHIO STATE ESTABLISHES ENVIRONMENTAL MOLECULAR SCIENCE INSTITUTE COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio State University is gearing up to attack a big problem -- by thinking small. Increasingly, scientists must study the tiny molecules of pollutants to find new ways to clean up the environment, and a new institute at Ohio State will do just that. The National Science Foundation has announced that it will provide $5.8 million over five years to fund an Environmental Molecular Sciences Institute (EMSI) on the campus. EMSI co-directors Patrick Hatcher, professor of chemistry, and Samuel Traina, professor of natural resources, will team with faculty across Ohio State and with collaborators at other academic, government, and industrial institutions to form the institute. "We look forward to addressing some long-standing environmental problems in new ways, by taking advantage of technologies that are just becoming available," said Hatcher. "People have been studying pollutants in one form or another for the last 100 years, but not at the molecular level," said Traina. "With today's technology, we'll learn a lot about specific pollutants, but we'll also learn more about soil, water, air -- all the systems in which pollutants interact." In 1998, NSF created the first three EMSIs -- at Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Princeton University. This year, NSF selected Ohio State to join in this program as the fourth EMSI. Other participating Ohio State researchers hail from fields such as public health, civil and environmental engineering, geological sciences, and chemical engineering. Hatcher said that faculty from all these areas frequently collaborate on environmental research, making Ohio State an ideal place for an EMSI. "The wide variety of participants adds a level of diversity to the EMSI that wouldn't necessarily be present at a smaller institution," Traina added. EMSIs foster collaboration between partner universities, the national labs, and commercial industry. Ohio State will work with ExxonMobil Corp., of Annandale, New Jersey; Aerodyne Research, Inc. of Billerica, MA; Ciba Specialty Chemicals of North America in Toms River, New Jersey; Argonne National Lab in Argonne, Illinois; the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Tennessee; Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts; and Boston College in Massachusetts. Hatcher said he hopes the EMSI will stimulate collaborations with Ohio industry as well. With these institutions, Ohio State will study sites contaminated with many common pollutants, including dies, solvents, creosote, and refinery waste. Researchers have studied these same pollutants in the past, but the instruments they used weren't sensitive enough to examine the tiny amounts often present in real-world pollution, Traina said. "In the past, we had to mix up samples of pollutants with concentrations so high, that you would never see them anywhere -- except maybe in the worst Superfund site you could find," he said. "That doesn't tell you a lot about how a pollutant could affect the environment in more realistic concentrations." "No one has been able to delve into these issues on a molecular level, because the tools just haven't been available. Before, we had to stop at the test tube. Now we can look deeper," said Hatcher. Hatcher and Traina explained how research at the EMSI could affect what we know about pollution -- and about the environment in general. In his previous work, Hatcher proposed that complex assemblages of molecules of decomposed plant matter called "humic substances" are able to envelop contaminants and trap them for years, or even longer. Hatcher said researchers want to understand whether such contaminants remain trapped -- and harmless -- forever, or if they could one day escape and do harm to the environment. "Think of an assemblage of humic substances as having a shell that is very strong, but if you hammer on it long enough, you can crack it and release what's inside," Hatcher said. Traina's work has focused on neutralizing contaminants in the environment. In 1996, he and colleagues at Ohio State and the Environmental Protection agency patented a method for immobilizing lead-contaminated soil by covering affected areas with finely ground phosphate rocks. In 1995, Traina and his colleagues received another patent for isolating a previously unrecognized type of bacterium that can naturally degrade a chemical herbicide found in drinking water supplies in many cities around the country. # Contact: Patrick Hatcher, (614) 688- 8799; Hatcher.42@osu.edu Samuel Traina, (614) 292-9037; Traina.1@osu.edu Written by Pam Frost, (614)292-9475; Frost.18@osu.edu