June 9, 1999
by Vik Kirsch
The Guelph Mercury

U of G Group to study metals and the environment

Metals research network gets $6.7 million

World-class research into metals in the environment has begun at the University of Guelph and elsewhere through creation of a metals research network.

Metals Research - Discussing the new metals research initiative are, from left, Guelph-Wellington MP Brenda Chamberlain, University of Guelph president Mordechai Rozanski and federal funder Tom Brzustowski, president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Photo Vik Kirsch.

"This is a bold research initiative," said Guelph-Wellington MP Brenda Chamberlain, who gathered with other dignitaries at the university's Guelph Turfgrass Institute to celebrate the launch. "This funding is great news for the University of Guelph."

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) president Tom Brzustowski announced $3.5 million over five years for the Metals in the Environment (MITE) Research Network.

The Mining Association of Canada and Ontario Power Generation (formerly Ontario Hydro) is adding $1.5 million to this. Funding from industry and other federal agencies brings the total to $6.7 million.

The network co-ordinator is University of Guelph Prof. Len Ritter, executive director of the campus-based Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres. The toxicology network has been a labour of love for Ritter.

"Most people don't get to dream this well," Ritter said, thrilled at the new funding news. He's seen the seeds he's sown with his toxicology network come to fruition.

"There aren't many of these around the world," Brzustowski said of research networks, praising Canadians Monday for taking the lead.

He termed the new metals research network, which began to take shape last year, a Canadian innovation creating "an intellectual critical mass" in an area of growing interest.

"We're sure the project will be a great success," predicted university president Mordechai Rozanski, noting it broadens humankind's understanding of metals and thus ultimately will lead to ecosystem environmental improvements.

The network's components include 12 universities and three federal departments: Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Research will concentrate on three main areas: sources of metals in the environment, the ways metals move and transform within this environment and the effects of metals on ecosystems.

Brzustowski, who holds an honorary University of Guelph degree, told the Mercury NSERC distributes half a billion dollars in funding a year, in three broad areas.

A little more than half goes to grants for basic research, less than one-quarter is earmarked for individual students and the remaining one quarter goes to university-industry research partnerships such as the MITE initiative.

Among local projects, Land Resource Science Prof. Bev Hale is studying how the toxic metal cadmium is accumulated in the soil and getting into some crops such as wheat, said Ritter.

On a broader scale, Hale said she's studying the cycling of metals in northern forests. She wants to find out how these metals are transmitted between soils and vegetation. Metal doesn't dissipate, she said. "Once it's there, it stays there."

MITE research director Peter Campbell, a professor at the Universite du Quebec, said over the past three decades, environmental research tended to focus on persistent organic pollutants and it's only been over the past five years or so that interest in metals pollution has emerged.