URI seeks volunteers for water-quality testing

NARRAGANSETT – A team of University of Rhode Island scientists will soon begin deploying a new, low-tech tool for monitoring water quality in Narragansett Bay, and they are looking for volunteers to help.
URI Professor Rainer Lohman calls the new tool “polyethylene passive samplers,” but they’re really just small sheets of a thin piece of plastic that are sold at most hardware stores as a painter’s drop cloth. Chemical compounds that are dissolved in water become absorbed into the polyethylene.
Lohman and colleagues Victoria Sacks and Jay Harding will lead a workshop for potential volunteers on Tuesday, Aug. 18 from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Coastal Institute Building on URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus.
The pollutants the team is trying to measure are common in industrial processes and personal care products and have been dubbed “emerging contaminants of concern.” They are increasingly found in waterways and are considered hazardous, but they are not typically monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency. &#8226