Plants as Pollution Sentinels for Improved Health in the Built Environment

植物作为改善建筑环境健康的污染哨兵

• 批准号: 1336877
• 负责人: Joel Burken
• 金额: $ 25.27万
• 依托单位: Missouri University of Science and Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-10-01 至 2016-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1336877&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Plants; Pollution; Sentinels; Improved; Health

CBET 1336877Joel G. BurkenMissouri University of Science and TechnologyVascular plants interact intimately with their surroundings, extracting water, nutrients and contaminants from the ground. The ability to draw in contaminants allows plants to act as sensors of environmental pollution below the ground and also in buildings. If contamination is present in the ground near a building, contaminant vapors can move through soil and transport into the building in a process known as vapor intrusion. Vapor intrusion into homes can pose a considerable health risk. This project will improve our understanding of how pollutants move between soil, plants and buildings, and how time and distance affect outcomes. Currently, assessing the threat of vapor intrusion is expensive and slow, particularly when compared to the use of plants as biosensors. The core hypothesis is that plants are very good at identifying areas of vapor intrusion risk, as vegetation occupies a similar environmental volume as residential buildings, both below and above ground. In this project, plants will be studied in a greenhouse and at currently contaminated field sites to determine how rapidly plants draw in soil pollution. In field studies, we will determine the 3-dimensional volume sampled by plant roots. The knowledge gained will better define contaminant fate and transport in the environment, particularly in vapor intrusion scenarios where pollution is not uniformly distributed in the soil. A better understanding of contaminant dynamics and interactions between plants and the environment will lead to more accurate ways of predicting potential risks to people in their homes. In addition to these scientific advances, new methods, both analytical and statistical, will be developed and applied with particular focus on vapor intrusion. This research will span from the fundamental molecular scale, to multimedia contaminant transport, to full scale systems that span the four dimensions of space and time. The field of phytoforensics excels at assessing threats rapidly and inexpensively. This is of great benefit to public health, particularly in areas where the economic incentive and public knowledge are lacking. Additionally, the mere presence of a drill rig and workers in protective gear creates the image of guilt for potentially responsible parties and could raise unwarranted concerns. These phytoforensic methods for vapor intrusion will not require entering homes for initial assessments, thereby greatly reducing the potentially unnecessary alarm or intrusion into personal space. The data and methods will be shared broadly and distributed in the US and internationally, among eight partner nations, via the ?Pollution Investigations by Trees? (PIT) program of which the PI is a founding partner. The broad and rapid dissemination will lead to results of this endeavor impacting many researchers and their efforts in delineating and remediating environmental pollutants as part of the global effort to protect human health. Collectively, knowledge of plant-contaminant interactions in time and space will be applied to sites with previously characterized vapor intrusion to model the performance of plants as vapor intrusion biosensors. If successful, this project will provide a low-cost, sustainable screening tool to rapidly anticipate threats to inhabitants at contaminated sites, thereby protecting a much larger population of at-risk residents.

CBET 1336877JOEL G. BURKENMISSOURI科学技术大学血流植物与周围环境密切相互作用，从地面上提取水，营养和污染物。吸收污染物的能力使植物可以充当地下和建筑物中环境污染的传感器。如果在建筑物附近的地面上存在污染，则污染物蒸气可以通过土壤移动并以称为蒸气侵入的过程进入建筑物。蒸气侵入房屋可能会带来很大的健康风险。该项目将提高我们对污染物如何在土壤，植物和建筑物之间移动的理解，以及时间和距离如何影响结果。当前，评估蒸气侵入的威胁昂贵且缓慢，尤其是与使用植物作为生物传感器相比。核心假设是植物非常擅长识别蒸气侵入风险的区域，因为植被占据了与地下和地面以下的住宅建筑相似的环境量。在该项目中，将在温室和目前受污染的现场研究植物进行研究，以确定植物在土壤污染中的迅速吸引。在现场研究中，我们将确定由植物根取样的3维体积。获得的知识将更好地定义环境中的污染物命运和运输，尤其是在蒸气侵入场景中，污染不均匀分布在土壤中。更好地了解植物与环境之间的污染动力以及互动将导致更准确的方法来预测房屋中人们的潜在风险。除了这些科学进步之外，还将开发和应用分析和统计的新方法，并特别关注蒸气侵入。这项研究将从基本分子量表到多媒体污染物的传输，再到跨越空间和时间四个维度的全尺度系统。植物质法的领域在迅速和廉价地评估威胁方面表现出色。 这对公共卫生有很大的好处，尤其是在缺乏经济激励和公共知识的领域。此外，仅在防护装备中的钻机和工人的存在就为潜在负责的当事方创造了内gui的形象，并可能引起不必要的担忧。这些用于蒸气侵入的植物增晶方法不需要进入家庭进行初步评估，从而大大减少了潜在的不必要的警报或入侵个人空间。数据和方法将通过树木的“污染调查”进行广泛共享，并在八个合作伙伴国家中在美国和国际上分布？ （PIT）PI是创始合作伙伴的程序。广泛而快速的传播将导致这项努力的结果，从而影响许多研究人员及其在划定和修复环境污染物方面的努力，这是全球保护人类健康努力的一部分。总体而言，对时代和空间中植物 - 雄性相互作用的知识将应用于先前表征的蒸气侵入的地点，以模拟植物作为蒸气侵入生物传感器的性能。如果成功的话，该项目将提供一种低成本，可持续的筛查工具，以迅速期待受污染的地点对居民的威胁，从而保护大量的高危居民。