Associate Professor of Chemistry
Project 3 Lead of the Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health
Curious about what “blind slimes” might be? Read on!
Please note that this interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
What does your current research focus on?
Andy Ault (AA): “The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health, directed by Greg Dick, was recently funded and I am leading Project 3 measuring aerosols over the Great Lakes. We’re also part of an NIH grant with Wayne State looking in the laboratory at how different toxins go from being in the water to being in the air. One of the challenges we’ve run into is that you cannot just go order a standard to make sure that what you think you are measuring is what you think it is. But in fact for microcystin, probably the most prevalent toxin, there are over 300 forms of it and we only have standards for roughly ten. So we’re working with people to make another 10 standards that could be potentially harmful and then look for them in a sample because people can’t do that now because they don’t even have the standard. One thing we do differently is that we have one foot in the lab and one in the field but we also really try to work from simple model systems all the way out to the complex, super complicated mixture that is the real world.
In another, we look at the challenging problem of secondary organic aerosol, which most folks know as haze or smog. Essentially, if you see dust getting kicked up on the road or smoke coming out of a tailpipe, we kind of have an idea how to deal with this (with filters), right? But what happens when molecules are emitted as gasses and undergo reactions and then condense onto particles? That’s really tough to control because gasses come from all sorts of places and then the actual reactions that are happening in the atmosphere determine how much pollution we get. So we’re interested in that because there are so many sources and it’s an incredibly complex web but it feels like a place where we can make a difference.”
What is the most interesting thing that your research group is doing?
AA: “ I would say the most interesting thing we’re up to right now is that we are trying to understand the relationship between harmful algal blooms in lakes and emissions to the atmosphere. There’s been a lot of work looking at water quality and potential exposures to pollutants or toxins from harmful algal blooms. For example, in Lake Erie we get blooms every summer, but there hasn’t been as much focus on what gets up into the air. And so this is something that we’ve been kind of pushing on for the last couple of years, trying to get people’s attention to it. You might think, “Oh, well, what’s in the water?” “If some of it goes up into the air, isn’t it just the same mixture of things?” But in fact, which chemicals or toxins get into the atmosphere depends on the properties of those particular chemicals or toxins, which is what we’re particularly interested in. So if we see one type of toxin in the water, there’s no guarantee that’s the one that gets up in the air that you end up breathing in. So we’re really interested in trying to just answer this question of if you’re breathing it in, which form is it? Is it the more or less toxic form? Nobody has any idea.”
Is there anything that you do differently in your personal life, knowing what you do from your research?
AA: “I would say, when we had the really bad smoke events last summer, knowing enough about inflation risks and things like that, I would wear a mask on those days to keep myself from breathing in all those particles. I can remember when I was a grad student, I did some fieldwork in Korea, and I went over during a really bad pollution event, and within minutes you’re coughing and you’re throat is very scratchy, and so at the time, I didn’t really appreciate that, but I know a lot more than I did back again 15 years ago. I would also be at least more cognizant of what’s in water if I were to say go waterskiing or we go boating on a lake.”
Is there anything that you do differently with your teaching, knowing what you know?
AA: “Oh, absolutely! One of the things I’m teaching is Environmental Chemistry this fall, which is one of my favorite classes. I’ve taught it almost every year I’ve been here, and every year I update it and try to bring in new material. And one of the nice things is to an extent there are only so many ways to teach general chemistry. But environmental chemistry is changing every year. And so it’s really fun sometimes to go back and look at what I was teaching 10 years ago when I was first doing the class versus now. And certain things have taken off and other things are less at the forefront, so it’s always this fun puzzle of trying to figure it out. One of the things I do when I’m teaching is I have the students find an article in the popular media that also refers to a scientific peer-reviewed article, and they present on both. And that’s always one of the things I love about it, is that it lets me see what people are most excited about, and then I can bring in the knowledge that I’ve learned about what’s going on recently, and try to keep everyone up to date on the most pressing topics at the moment.”
How do you see climate change affecting your research in the next 10 years?
AA: “So many ways. Where do I start? As the climate is getting warmer, we get more and more emissions, essentially, of these different gasses of different types, be they from trees or industrial processes. Overall, we’re just getting more stuff up into the air. And because of higher temperatures, things get more volatile, right? You know, you walk by asphalt on a summer day, and you smell those polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, right? But if we walk by in winter, it’s nice and cold and frozen, you don’t smell anything. So as we have warmer temperatures, we have more of that. Warmer temperatures impact these lakes and the lake spray aerosol with harmful algal blooms, because those little critters in the lake are a lot happier if it’s warmer. There are predicted to be increased winds over the Great Lakes as we have increased effects from climate change, so that’s going to lead to more of this aerosol coming out of the lakes. We’re one of the very few groups that are focused on looking at what happens with freshwater lakes and aerosol emissions.”
What is something that you wish people knew right now from your research?
AA: “I think something I wish that people would realize is just how many aerosols are up in the air. If you take a deep breath, right? If you do, you breathe in somewhere between a half million and a million particles in every breath. So people don’t necessarily understand just how much of the stuff they’re breathing in, and the fact that what it’s made of really matters, you know? And that’s tough because if you talk to folks in public health, or talk to the regulators at EPA, most of our kind of regulations are just based on how much stuff there is. It’s not based on what it’s made of. But if you walk along the beach and breathe in a bunch of salt from the ocean, versus if you are standing breathing directly out of a tailpipe, intrinsically, you know that they’re going to have different impacts on you. And so I think just realizing that for every little milliliter of air, you typically have 10s of 1000s of particles in that. Realizing that and figuring out this mystery of where they come from and how they change while they’re in the air, that’s what gets me up then in the morning, that’s what I get excited about.”
Do you see yourself doing the same research in 10 years?
AA: “Great question. No, in the sense that research is always changing. If you’d told postdoc Andy when he was on his interviews the projects that I’m working on today, I probably wouldn’t have believed you, because we follow the science. I think one of the things that I love about my particular field is that you find this thing and maybe it’s unexpected, then you pull the string a little further and you just keep pulling. All of a sudden you’re somewhere you never expected to be. So, I’ll probably be doing some of the same topics, but in the same vein, if I’m not doing new things I’ll be disappointed because there’s so much to do that’s out there. One of the things that I love about this job is that when I come in, every single day, scientifically, it’s different, I’m talking to different people, learning different things, working with students on different experiments. Keeping it fresh and exciting is one of the things that drives me so I would say that probably similar things, but hopefully new things as well.”
What advice do you have for other educators in the sustainability space?
AA: “I think my advice would be to try and make sure that what you’re doing is relatable and accessible. It’s one thing to go to a conference, talk to our peers, and use all of our inside jargon, but sometimes we’re not always trained as academics to speak without it. And so think carefully about how, as you’re moving into the sustainability space, from maybe a place where you’ve had less contact with people outside of your normal bubble, it is really important to be able to make it relatable, make it accessible, speak in a language that people can understand. Because we can just run around saying the world is ending but it can be a little deflating and demoralizing to people. We face significant challenges, but the best way to address those challenges is by bringing people in and helping them understand how they can make a difference, as opposed to just saying that we’re facing these immeasurable challenges.”
As a part of the Year of Sustainability, we are interested in sharing, uplifting, and highlighting stories about the people who make up LSA and have experience researching sustainability. We sat down with a series of LSA faculty to discuss their background and work and will feature these conversations in our Faculty Spotlight series.
To contact the LSA Year of Sustainability Team, please contact sustainable-lsa@umich.edu.
