Dibyendu Sarkar
UTSA researcher recognized for water, soil cleaning efforts
(Dec. 1, 2004)--UTSA associate professor of environmental
geochemistry Dibyendu Sarkar has been awarded the
2004 Young Agricultural Scientist Award by the Association of
Agricultural Scientists of Indian Origin (AASIO).
The award recognizes agricultural scientists of Indian origin
who have made outstanding contributions by age 40. Nominees are
judged on the significance and originality of basic and applied
research in agronomy, crop science, horticultural science, soil
science or plant biology and must have demonstrated excellence in
teaching, extension service or administrative duties.
A graduate student supervisor in the Center for Water Research
and the director of the Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory,
Sarkar, 36, and his colleagues designed a remediation plan to
clean up arsenic from EPA-designated Superfund sites contaminated
by hazardous waste and identified for cleanup for their risk to
human health or the environment.
Currently, Sarkar is studying the relationship between
vegetation and water quality at San Antonio's Mitchell Lake, which
was used as a sludge disposal lagoon from 1900-1930. Recently, the
Mitchell Lake Audubon Center and the San Antonio Water System have
attempted to clean up the lake to make it more attractive to bird
enthusiasts, while providing a safe, educational and recreational
resource.
Additionally, Sarkar is collaborating with biomedical
scientists at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San
Antonio (UTHSCSA) on a multidisciplinary approach to reducing lead
and arsenic in agricultural soils using special plants and
removing lead-based paint from pre-1972 housing.
Read more in the San
Antonio Express-News.
--Kris
Rodriguez
College of
Sciences
eNews
January/February
2005
Dibs
Sarkar selected as San Antonio 2004 Rising Star
Dibyendu
Sarkar was honored Friday, January 28, 2005, at an awards
breakfast for this year’s
40 Under Forty winners selected by the San Antonio Business
Journal. Each of the 40 has
made significant contributions to this community; the selection
committee looked forindividuals who are making a difference in
their industries, in San Antonio, and in the business
world. Previous winners include Mayor Ed Garza and Texas Supreme
Court Justice Wallace
Jefferson.
Sarkar
was chosen, in part, because of his extensive work in
environmental remediation projects
such as the Mitchell Lake restoration initiative and cleanup of
arsenic from Environmental
Protection Agency-designated Superfund sites. The
Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory at UTSA, founded and
directed by Sarkar, is a
state-of-the-art facility with $400,000 worth of analytical
instrumentation and a dozengraduate and post-doctoral students who
are helping generate more than $1 million in grant
funding and more than 60 articles, book chapters, and technical
abstracts.
(Visit
the San Antonio Business Journal’s website:
sanantonio.bizjournals.com for complete coverage)
--Meredith
Sterling
Task force
gearing up to get the lead out
Web Posted:
12/01/2004 12:00 AM CST
Lety Laurel
Express-News Staff Writer
San Antonio is a city known for its history, from the Alamo to
the historic homes threaded through the city's core. But that
history comes with a price.
Almost all homes built before 1978 were covered in lead-based
paint. Now, the federal government is paying to have that paint
cleaned up in lower-income neighborhoods. The U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development has given three San Antonio
institutions a total of $3.1 million in an effort to make the city
lead-free by 2010.
The University of Texas Health Science Center, the University
of Texas at San Antonio and the city's Neighborhood Action
Department will work together as the San Antonio Lead Task Force
to attack lead from every corner.
The health science center will work on ways to expand lead
screening of children and pregnant women and encourage more
physicians to test for lead. UTSA will look at removing lead from
soil by using special plants. The Neighborhood Action Department
will focus on removing lead from homes.
"We are all supposed to help each other out in our
respective grants," said Dibyendu Sarkar, associate professor
in the environmental science department and director of the
environmental geochemistry lab at UTSA. "Our idea is to make
San Antonio lead-free by 2010. This is HUD's vision and the reason
they are spending this money."
The funds are part of $6 million allocated to Texas by HUD for
lead removal. The grants are part of almost $168 million awarded
around the nation to help local communities improve the conditions
of families living in lower-income housing by removing potentially
dangerous lead, stimulating private-sector investment in
lead-hazard control, educating the public about lead-based paint,
funding model programs that promote healthier and safer home
environments, and supporting scientific research into ways of
identifying and eliminating health hazards in housing.
The San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, working with a
grant from the Texas Department of Health, has worked on lead
surveillance, case identification and referrals since 1991. Its
role won't change because the HUD grants were given to the other
institutions, but the organization now will have help it never had
before, said Sam Sanchez, environmental health administrator for
the health district.
"We have a grant already for lead-prevention programs, but
what was missing was lead remediation," he said. "This
completes the circle."
It also is the first collaboration of its kind for the city,
officials said.
David D. Garza, director of the Neighborhood Action Department,
said the grants show that HUD is in tune with the community.
"As you know, we recently have seen this issue surface
with the activity going on with San Antonio Housing
Authority," he said, referring to two cases this year where
lead was found in children living in a SAHA housing project.
"I'm not going to say that's the only reason, but the
concern (about) lead abatement is not a secret to HUD."
According to the health science center, lead poisoning affects
an estimated 1 million American children ages 1 to 5. It is linked
to kidney damage, anemia, developmental deficits, poor memory and
other cognitive issues, skin problems and damage to nerves that
transmit information from the brain and spinal cord throughout the
body. It also affects children in the womb.
Last year, the health district tested about 15,000 children in
the San Antonio area and found about 300 or 400 with elevated
levels of lead, Sanchez said. In 2001, Bexar County reported 452
children under age 6 had toxic levels of lead.
"We know once children are exposed to lead, it does have a
number of organ-system problems it can cause," said Dr.
Anthony Scott, associate professor of pediatrics at the health
science center. "Once it is present, it basically takes up a
permanent residency and can cause traditional academic problems
and also behavioral problems as they go through life."
The health science center will provide instruction on the
dangers of lead to 250 primarily Hispanic mother-and-child pairs,
including 50 pregnant women.
"In essence, mom is a lead-producing factory," Scott
said. "We are questioning if there is something that can be
done if a pregnant woman basically contracted lead. If mom is a
lead-bearing person, can you lower that lead level so that the
infant will have less of a lead level when it is born?"
Aside from older paint, lead can be found in pottery with lead
glaze, pipes soldered with lead, automotive repair shops,
factories and cultural remedies. It also has been found in some
candies coming from other countries. According to the health
science center, risk factors for lead exposure include minority
ethnicity, age of housing, income level and occupation.
The Neighborhood Action Department will work to remediate lead
from 126 homes around the city. UTSA will work with the city to
remediate lead-contaminated soil from some of those properties.
Sarkar said when lead-based paint is used on the exterior of a
house, lead can leach out of the paint and into the soil.
"The main thing is kids put their hands in their mouths.
They are eating dirt all the time," he said.
The contaminated soil also can be tracked inside and can seep
into carpets.
"The idea is to nip it in the bud," Sarkar said.
"If you can find out something, a cheap, unobtrusive and
environmentally friendly method of cleaning it up outside, then we
can reduce the exposure of kids to lead inside and outside."
Sanchez said the collaboration between the entities will
produce the greatest impact on the city.
"What this means is that, No. 1, San Antonio should have
in place a system now to identify and track and follow and
remediate lead from the environment of children in a way that we
have not been able to do before," he said. "No. 2, it
will strengthen ties between research institutions like UTSA and
the health science center and the city of San Antonio. And third
and probably most important, it will be a true benefit to those
children identified with elevated levels of lead in this
community."
llaurel@express-news.net
College of
Sciences eNews
November/December
2004
EGL well-represented at national
Geological Society of America meeting
The 2004 annual
meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) was held in
Denver, CO November 7-11. Eight oral
presentations and four poster presentations were made by members
of the UTSA-Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory
(EGL) in the symposium "Current Perspectives in Environmental
Biogeochemistry." Sarkar and Datta organized and chairedthe
symposium, which was this year’s largest with 31 presentations.
UTSA-EGL presenters included Dibs Sarkar, Stuart Birnbaum,
and Rupali Datta (faculty), Saurabh Sharma (post-doctoral fellow),
Chacharee Therapong, Shahida Quazi, Rachana Nagar
(Ph.D. students), Abraham Frias, Vandana Vandanapu, Alpana Khairom,
Neal Simpson, and Christopher Amy (M.S. students).
GSA Press has asked Sarkar and Datta to edit a book with the same
title as that of the symposium, to be published late in
2005.
The following
presentations were made by the EGL members (student authors underlined):
1. Datta,
R. and Sarkar, D. (2004)
Human health risk from exposure to soil arsenic: Does one size fit
all? Geological Society
of America Abstracts
with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
2. Vandanapu,
V., Sarkar, D., Datta, R., and Sharma, S.
(2004) Arsenic adsorption and
desorption by water treatment
residuals: Preliminary results. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
3. Khairom,
A., Sarkar, D., and Datta, R. (2004) Bioavailability of
arsenic and phosphorus in a sandy soil amended with
water treatment residuals. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
4. Simpson,
N.W., Sarkar, D., Sharma, S., and Datta, R. (2004) Heavy metal
geochemistry in sludge-affected sediments
of Mitchell Lake, Texas. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
5. Frias,
A.R., Sarkar, D., and Datta, R.
(2004) Geochemical forms and
bioavailability of arsenic in pesticide-applied cotton
soils of Texas: An incubation
study. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
6. Therapong,
C., Datta, R., and Sarkar, D. (2004) Arsenic stress response
in rice: Comparison between organic and
inorganic pesticides. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
7. Quazi,
S., Sarkar, D., Datta, R., and Sharma, S. (2004) Greenhouse
study on arsenic speciation and bioavailability in
two pesticide-contaminated soils of
Florida: Preliminary results. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V.
36, No. 5.
8. Nagar,
R., Sarkar, D., Datta, R., Khairom, A., Vandanapu,
V., and Quazi, S. (2004) Effect of sewage sludge
addition on
heavy metal concentrations in
agricultural soils. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
9. Amy,
C.D., Sarkar, D., and Datta, R. (2004) In-situ stabilization
of arsenic in soils amended with water treatment
residuals. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
10. Birnbaum,
S.J., Sarkar, D., Datta,R., and Ferguson, M.C. (2004) Treat
it or leave it? A bench-scale view comparing
monitored natural attenuation with two
forms of biostimulation. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program,
V. 36, No. 5.
11. Sarkar,
D. and Parra-Noonan, M, and Datta, R. (2004)
Bioavailability of arsenic in cattle dipping vat site soils as a
function of soil chemistry. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
12. Sharma,
S., Datta, R., and Sarkar, D. (2004) Effect of equilibration time
on arsenic bioavailability in two Florida soils
contaminated with arsenical
pesticide. Geological
Society of America Abstracts with Program, V. 36, No. 5.
--Meredith
Sterling
