WC142 MayJune 2025 - Magazine - Page 22
COVER STORY
“The potential accumulation of PFAS in wastewater systems is
fargreaterastheycollecte昀툀uentfromindustrialsites.”
The Niagara River north of the Falls where it feeds into Lake Ontario from Lake Erie.
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WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2025
By introducing living zooplankton invertebrates into water
that’s being tested, “they tell us if they’re impacted by the water…
through a whole bunch of endpoints. Mortality is an obvious
one or reproductive impairment. But behaviours as well… if our
animals are really scared, they’re showing us. So then what you
have is an early warning system… and then you go in and find the
smoking gun with chemical analysis.”
Turning the tide
Apart from addressing the ongoing funding challenges on both sides
of the border, the consensus coming from industry experts is that we
need to continue to work together to solve the Great Lakes’ water
quality challenges before those problems spiral out of control.
Sierra Club’s Leaphart says her group has benefitted greatly
from the ongoing dialogue between U.S. and Canadian representatives with respect to project funding.
It’s a spirit of cooperation that GLCI’s Murphy-Rheume
enthusiastically echoes. “Just a few years ago, we celebrated the
50th anniversary of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement
between both countries. And given the current context between
Canada and the U.S., we want to see ongoing collaboration and
cooperation in that we share these waters. Every organization,
every stakeholder in the region has an interest in ensuring that we
continue that dialogue.”
Mark Douglas Wessel
While some of the root causes of those blooms have since been
addressed, the spread of an algae known as Microcystis aeruginosa
presents a major challenge, says McCartney, whose research lab
specializes in aquatic toxicology.
“It produces a toxin called microcystin,” she observes. “So when
you then go to drink the water from [locations such as] western
Lake Erie, you’ve got to make sure that the filtration system that
you’re depending on can take out this toxin. That was not the
problem in the ’60s.”
Left untreated, water where there are Microcystis blooms can
cause vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, pneumonia, and fever when
ingested. People swimming in those waters have experienced skin
rashes and blistering of the mouth.
A longstanding hurdle both in terms of identifying and addressing the multiple challenges associated with Great Lakes water
quality, McCartney says, is “you’ve got 60,000 contaminants out
there, you simply don’t have enough standards, enough time, or
enough money to chemically analyze which one is toxic… with all
those GC (gas chromatography) mass specs and liquid chromatography, it’s not fast enough.”
In stark contrast to that methodology, McCartney’s team is creating a ripple — if not making waves — with what she describes
as a “canary in a coal mine” approach as part of an early warning
system to detect threats to our drinking water supply.
