All day Friday in the LaSells Stewart Center was the third annual Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Research Day, attended by about 150 people from within the Oregon State University community and outside.
The research day serves "to show the community what we're doing in our department. For most of the day, speakers from the department present a variety of EMT topics in the auditorium, while in adjacent rooms, OSU EMT students display their research with posters," said Susan Atkisson, the office manager for the department of environmental and molecular toxicology. "One room is reserved for posters that will be competitively judged by field experts, and the other room contains posters that will not be judged."
Topics presented on the posters included research on a potential novel virus that causes neurofibromas in goldfish and the projects of an endophyte testing lab set up at OSU.
"For the most part," said Atkisson, "it's internal to OSU, but everyone is invited." Special guests also visit for the research day from facilities such as Portland's OHSU.
According to Craig Marcus, at the heart of EMT Research Day is the intent to "highlight our students' research and show it to the wider community."
Dr. Richard Peterson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison was the event's keynote speaker, presenting on his research in environmental toxicology. His research concerned reproductive failure in Great Lakes trout and its association with environmental contaminants, particularly dioxins, a global contaminant of public health concern that Peterson compared to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, an infamously discontinued insecticide.
Effects of dioxins on the rest of the biosphere can be inferred through his focus on the fish population. He described trout as a "top of the food chain, predator fish," adding that the fish are connected to the rest of their environment, and that if their population drops, their prey may face overpopulation.
Fish are not the only population that may be affected by dioxin contact. Peterson explained the ubiquity of the toxin—it is in the air we breathe, the water we drink and our food and soil. His study of the Great Lakes' fish can indirectly be a glimpse of how dioxins can harm us.
"We're trying to understand what long-term, low-dose exposure means," Marcus said.
Annecy Beauchemin, staff reporter
737-2231 news@dailybarometer.com
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