Jason Van De Merwe South QLD Regional Representative
mikaela.nordborg@my.jcu.edu.au j.vandemerwe@griffith.edu.au
CSIRO and the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI)
Led by David Beale and Suzanne Vardy, a recent ground-breaking new study has measured concentrations of PFAS - also known as ‘forever chemicals’ - in Australian wildlife, following an analysis of freshwater turtle (Emydura macquarii macquarii) populations in Queensland. The joint study by CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, and the Queensland Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation (DETSI), discovered biochemical changes to adult turtles and their hatchlings, and observed population decline. The research made use of omics-based tools, which are advanced techniques used to assess thousands of molecules within an organism to find out how it has responded to a contaminant or disease.
CSIRO and DETSI uncover health impacts of ‘forever chemicals’ on freshwater turtles
ARITOX Research Group, Griffith University
The ARI-TOX Research Group at Griffith University has had another busy year. Frederic Leusch, Jason van de Merwe, Peta Neale, Kimberly Finlayson and Matt Johnson finalised the ARC Linkage ‘Saving Nemo’ project, where they have developed a suite of cell-based bioassays for more ethical and high throughput assessments of the environmental impacts of wastewater discharges. Jason van de Merwe and Kimberly Finlayson have also been applying their marine turtle cell-based toxicity bioassays to assessing sea turtle health in Hervey Bay, in collaboration with Sea World and the Queensland Department of Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation in response to the major flooding event at the beginning of 2022.
Shima Ziajahromi has been sweeping the awards (see photos below), being named Queensland’s Young Tall Poppy in August, and receiving the Griffith University VC Research Excellence Award (ECR) in November. Shima was also recently awarded a Thomas Davis Research Grant for Marine, Soil and Plant Biology (Australia Academy of Science) for the project: ‘Fate and behaviour of biosolid-derived microplastics in Australian agricultural soils: Lab-scale experiments and Field evidence’. In addition, Chantal Lanctot was recently awarded an Australian Research Council Early Career Industry Fellowship for her project: Determining the Ecological Impacts of Bushfire Fighting Chemicals'.
A group of ARI-TOX researchers attended the What’s in Our Water Symposium in Canberra at the end of October (see photos below). Matt Johnson and Sana Ajaz were awarded the ‘Best Snapshot Presentation Student’ - Winner & Runner up prizes, respectively.
TropWATER Ecotox team at JCU
No rest for the wicked up north! Work during the second half of this year has been geared towards dry season REMP sampling at three of our four sites and assisting other TropWATER projects where needed.
Shelley Templeman has been busy running her aquatic environmental monitoring skills short course for local groups in Townsville and Rockhampton. She was also invited by Jules to give a lecture at ANU alongside other notable SETACers.
As a team we have been working alongside our clients to understand the major challenges currently faced by the mining industry in applying the water quality guidelines to ephemeral/temporary systems. We are currently looking at developing a project with industry stakeholders and other research groups in Northern Australia to develop water quality frameworks that are more relevant to the wet/dry Tropics. Part of this involves a pilot study we hope to have underway early next year incorporating our macroinvertebrate sampling and the TropWATER eDNA capabilities to undertake comprehensive environmental monitoring.
Shelley, Chris and Sarah presenting a poster at the Trailblazer forum.
In the field Sarah McDonald has been keeping busy undertaking dry season fieldwork before the big rains hit. Sarah visited a local school in Tully NQ alongside Terrian NRM and Mamu Rangers to co-run a Guardians of the Reef program as part of National Science Week. She took year 5 and 6 students on a field trip to conduct water quality and macroinvertebrate assessments – the kids had a great time and loved looking at all the bugs under the microscope. Recently Sarah returned from Canberra after attending the AUSRIVAS course run at the University of Canberra. She plans to work alongside our resident macroinvertebrate taxonomist Julie Hanley to get her taxa identification up to scratch before going for her taxonomy accreditation.
Science Week in Tully
Sarah attending the fieldwork components of the AUSRIVAS course in Canberra.
ANSTO Environmental Toxicology and Radioecology team; Tom Cresswell
(Contact: Tom.Cresswell@ansto.gov.au)
Tom Cresswell recently attended the NORM Global conference in Denver, Colorado to discuss the team’s research into the characterisation and risk assessment of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in offshore oil and gas infrastructure decommissioning. Tom has also been working with Dr Darren Koppel from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) to develop an assessment framework for NORM and mercury in subsea petroleum pipelines to assist with decommissioning planning. The framework is nearly complete and we are hoping to finalise the documentation in February 2025.
Alexandra Boyd visited the National Sea Simulator twice this year to work with Dr Darren Koppel from AIMS to undertake a 28 day sediment bioaccumulation test, which aimed to determine the bioavailability and potential effects of NORM within sediments. Darren visited ANSTO Lucas Heights in October to commence the long process of radiochemical analysis to determine tissue and sediment NORM concentrations from the experiment. Learn more about this world-leading research from Darren here. Ali has also supported a number of student research projects, contributed to commercial work and is leading ANSTO’s continuation of sediment toxicity testing following CSIRO’s departure from the Lucas Heights campus.
Elisabeth Tondl has synthesised metacinnabar (β-HgS) from HgCl2 using radioactive mercury-203 (203Hg) which is produced by ANSTO’s OPAL nuclear reactor. Elisabeth will then lead a series of experiments using the radiotracer β-[203Hg]HgS to determine the solubility of metacinnabar under simulated Australian offshore conditions as part of the data required for assessing the risk to the environment of mercury from offshore infrastructure decommissioning. Elisabeth plans to present this research at the upcoming SETAC Europe conference in Vienna, Austria in May 2025.
Danielle Hill (Griffith Uni PhD candidate) is juggling completing her manuscripts from her PhD with near full-time work for NSW DCCEEW and is progressing well.
Amy MacIntosh graduated from her PhD in October 2024 and has taken up a position as Technical Support officer for the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).
Caitlin Younis (UTS PhD candidate) is planning a second selenium-75 (75Se) radiotracer experiment to understand the bioaccumulation and sharing of selenium by corals and their symbionts under heat stress. The radiotracer is produced by ANSTO’s OPAL research reactor and enables Caitlin to conduct live-organism (i.e., non-destructive) radiotracing studies to understand the bioaccumulation and retention kinetics of selenium using state of the art gamma counting instruments.
Alexandra Bastick (Charles Sturt Uni Hons student) has been investigating the effect of external ionising radiation on the growth of Tisochrysis lutea, a tropical marine microalga native to Australia. This research aims to understand how naturally occurring radioactive material contaminated scale in decommissioned pipelines might impact marine organisms in the surrounding environment. Previous modelling has indicated that organisms colonizing the external surface of an intact pipe could be exposed to radiation dose rates up to three times higher than the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) international screening level (34 μGy/hr compared to 10 μGy/hr). However, this screening level was established using toxicity from a range of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, largely from the northern hemisphere, leaving knowledge gaps regarding its applicability to the unique species found in Australian marine ecosystems. To improve risk assessments for the potential in-situ decommissioning of Australian offshore oil and gas infrastructure, more radiation toxicity data is needed.
For her experiment, Alex cultured T. lutea in the lab and exposed them to a sealed Ceasium-137 source in 72-hour chronic toxicity assays, measuring their daily growth using flow cytometry. The results show no significant impact on population growth at dose rates up to 7.9 m Gy/h, which is substantially higher than what they would encounter in the environment. This suggests that the growth of T. lutea is unlikely to be affected at the expected radiation doses from NORM-contaminated pipelines. However, there may be other effects occurring that could impact cellular processes, such as photosynthesis or DNA replication, which are not reflected by measurements of growth. Additionally, radiation sensitivity is species-specific and other marine organisms that may colonize the external surfaces of pipelines could have different responses to external radiation exposure compared to T. lutea. Alex has been awarded a first class grade for her thesis and is now preparing a peer-reviewed scientific publication.
Holly Hollomon (UNSW Hons student) has submitted their thesis which aimed to develop a set of baseline data of background mercury concentrations, chemical speciation & organ partitioning of mercury in Red Emperor Fish tissue. These fish were collected in a pristine location in the northwest shelf of Western Australia by AIMS for a previous study where they examined the gut contents and determined trophic position of the samples. The experimental objective expanded after an initial literature review to include a secondary objective of selenium quantification due to its capacity to detoxify mercury. This data will provide key stakeholders with background mercury concentrations in marine fish to assist in future risk assessments for the decommissioning of subsea oil and gas infrastructure.
Fish organs were dissected and subsequently freeze-dried. Dried organs were acid digested using a closed vessel and analytical microwave then analysed using Cold Vapour-Atomic Fluorescence Spectrometry (CV-AFS; PSA Millenium Merlin). Using this instrument gives us the capacity to look at mercury at ultra-low concentrations, something that is pertinent to creating an accurate baseline dataset. Over the course of Holly’s project, one of the largest take-aways our team have found is that mercury is a very difficult element to work with. We found that there are an array of published methods for biological sample digestion that tend to contradict each other and lack the necessary QA/QC to trust the numbers that were reported. There was also a slew of analytical obstacles we have had to overcome using this new instrument. Due to these difficulties, we sent out our samples for external total mercury analysis at a NATA Accredited commercial lab. However, their results also showed poor recovery of certified reference materials and poor reproducibility. Receiving this data cemented the notion that mercury is a difficult element to work with analytically. We were able to achieve satisfactory selenium returns from external analysis and will be using this data in Holly’s thesis.
In our method development for mercury speciation (i.e. the analysis of organic vs. inorganic mercury), we have consistently been able to achieve a satisfactory recovery and reproducibility of mercury from certified reference materials in our analysis. From this preliminary data we have been able to derive some insights into the biodistribution of organic and inorganic mercury in different marine fish organs. In the kidneys and livers, we are seeing a much higher concentration of inorganic mercury than organic mercury. This can be contrasted to the hearts and gonads that tend to have both species of mercury in a 1:1 ratio. Muscle tissue samples, which are the focus of many studies on mercury, tend to exclusively show organic mercury in its tissues. There are other tissue types such as the brain, fins & gills that tend to show little to no mercury. As a first for the Australian marine ecosystem, this data provides insights into the biodistribution of mercury between different organs of marine fish, which can be used to identify potential organs of toxicity for mercury exposed fish and to inform future biomonitoring studies for mercury.
Marie Thomas (University of Queensland and AIMS PhD candidate) joined the group earlier this year to conduct a series of radiotracer experiments with different species of mercury. Marie, with the assistance of Francesca, Ali and Elisabeth, undertook dietary pulse-chase experiments using live-animal radiotracer techniques and has generated a great data set showing that methyl mercury (MeHg) is assimilated very well by snails (fed contaminated algae) and by shrimp (fed the snails in a simple food web model) and is well retained by snails and shrimp. Soluble inorganic mercury species (i.e. HgCl2) were assimilated between 50 and 70% from diet and then slowly depurated by both snails and shrimp, which was in stark contrast to insoluble inorganic mercury species (i.e. β-HgS), which was not assimilated from diet to any significant degree by either snails or shrimp and instead, passed through their guts. The data, aiming to be submitted for publication in the next few months, provides much needed information in assessing potential ecological risk from mercury associated with decommissioned offshore infrastructure to Australian marine organisms.
Further details:
For further details on ANSTO’s research into risk assessing contaminants associated with offshore oil and gas infrastructure decommissioning, please check out our website.
Aquatic and Coastal Environmental Sciences Lab,
Macquarie University - School of Natural Sciences.
Contact Dr Katherine Dafforn (Katherine.dafforn@mq.edu.au)
Stormwater and its associated environmental stressors has been a major focus for our lab group for a number of years and Luke Walker continues this research by investigating the roles of microbes (bacteria and fungi) in alleviating environmental stressors associated with stormwater drains such as heavy metals and nutrients on seagrass meadows in Lake Macquarie, NSW. Luke is currently developing microbial inoculation methods with the aim of creating experimental conditions whereby the effects of presence and absence of microbes on seagrass plants under metal stress can be measured while maintaining physico-chemically comparable sediments. Upon determination of the most effective method of inoculation, Luke will conduct the experiment regarding microbial moderated alleviation of metal stress on seagrass plants. Luke acquired funding to present his research at the European Marine Biology Symposium in Napoli, Italy (Sept this year).
After finishing her Master of Research investigating the morphological variation in the golden kelp, Ecklonia radiata, in response to urban stressors (incl. heavy metals and nutrients) (paper available here), Annemie Rose Janssen has started her PhD in October 2024, co-supervised by Prof. Melanie Bishop and Prof. Mariana Mayer-Pinto. Her research aims to unlock the secrets of adaptive strategies of kelp forests under predicted climate change and increased urbanisation. After characterising the genetic structure of kelp across Sydney Harbour, Annemie Rose has been running a mesocosm experiment at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, exposing different genotypes to copper, to further understand the mechanisms behind urban ecological resilience of kelp forests. Annemie Rose presented her research at the Australasian Coastal Restoration Network Symposium (ACRN 2024) in May.
The lab is so proud of Amy MacIntosh who was awarded her PhD for a thesis entitled “Take it or leave it: ecological assessment of NORM from decommissioned offshore infrastructure”. Amy is putting her skills in ecological risk assessment to work by joining ARPANSA as a Technical Support Officer. We also farewelled Giulia Filippini earlier this year. After being awarded her doctorate with no corrections needed she took up a postdoctoral position with UNSW.
School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England
Contacts Susan Wilson (swilso24@une.edu.au) or Matt Tighe (mtighe2@une.edu.au)
Postdoc Steven Doherty has been successful with proposals to the Australian and Taiwan Synchrotron facilities and has been working with Ed Burton of Southern Cross University and PhD student Ursina Morgenthaler of University of Bern examining arsenic, antimony and tungsten mineralogy and biogeochemical cycling.
PhD student Carolyn Sonter has recently been awarded her PhD with no corrections needed for a thesis titled “Bees under stress: A study of PFOS exposure and protected cropping stress effects on the western honey bee (Apis mellifera)”. Honours student Caitlyn George was awarded an Honours Medal for her thesis titled “The Persistence of Antibiotic Resistance Genes During Chicken Manure Composting”. Such great work by both students! PhD student Nivetha Sivarajah is continuing her work examining microplastics in agricultural soils and was successful with a DAP scholarship.
Sue and Carolyn attended the fantastic What’s in our Water conference in Canberra, and Sue recently presented as an expert witness to the Senate Inquiry on PFAS.
Recent publications from the group:
Check out our webpage at www.une.edu.au/pollutionscience. We have PhD opportunities, including scholarships.
La Trobe University Adjunct Professor Jenny Stauber (based in NSW)
Adjunct Professor Jenny Stauber was recently invited to give two plenary presentations: firstly at the Australian College of Toxicologists and Risk Assessors meeting in Canberra in late August, followed by a plenary at the SETAC Asia Pacific meeting in Tianjin, China in late September to over 1200 participants. Jenny’s talks on incorporating climate change into environmental risk assessment were illustrated with a Great Barrie Reef case study, now published as part of a series in the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management vol 20 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1002/ieam.4871.
La Trobe PhD candidate Sarah Green (supervised by Dr Aleicia Holland, Dr David Beale and Jenny) also attended the China meeting and presented an excellent talk on her Honours work on co-accumulation of copper and zinc in zebrafish larvae. The trip included many delicious Chinese banquets, a daytime visit to markets and a night-time cruise along the river. Like many cities, Tianjin was most spectacular at night.
Sarah Green, David Beale and Darren Koppel in Tianjin
In between meetings, Jenny Stauber also travelled to Montreal Canada in September as part of her role on the international metals industries Ecotoxicity Technical Advisory Panel (ETAP). This is a 4-person panel who review and provide advice on current environmental issues in the metals and mining industries globally each year for industry stakeholders including Rio Tinto. This year the topic was the UN’s Triple Planetary Crises (climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste). This is particularly relevant as the UN seeks to establish a Science Policy Panel on Chemicals Pollution and Waste, to complement the international panels on climate change (IPCC) and biodiversity (IPBES). Unfortunately, an imminent Air Canada pilot strike forced Jenny to return immediately after the meeting, but she did get to see the spectacular light show inside Old Montreal’s cathedral.
Jenny is working with Jenni Gadd, Aleicia Holland, Rick Van Dam and wca consultants from the UK to develop a new tiered assessment framework to incorporate metal bioavailability into water quality guidelines for Australia and New Zealand. The international Metals Environment Research Associations (MERA) have provided the funding to develop and implement the approach including a new tool for calculating bioavailability-adjusted guideline values. Copper and nickel have been completed, with zinc to follow next year. The work is guided by a consultative group of regulatory scientists who have been road-testing the tool.
Office of the Supervising Scientist
Good progress has been made on the PFAS in aquatic bush food project that OSS is undertaking in collaboration with the Djurrubu Rangers. We have now completed the sampling of fish in Mudjinberri Billabong and sampling of water lily stems from Georgetown and Coonjimba Billabongs, the latter on the Ranger project area lease.
In fish, low concentrations of PFOS was detected in the flesh and somewhat higher, but still low in the liver and gonads. The good news was that no PFAS was detected in water lily stems. The fish part of the project was presented by Gisi Lamche at the WIOW symposium in October 2024 with Andrew Harford also contributing in the WIOW workshops.