LSU professor lands $11 million grant for pollutant research

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has given Barry Dellinger of the LSU Department of Chemistry an $11 million grant to continue researching a category of deadly pollutants that the LSU Superfund Research Center helped identify. Dellinger will be studying Environmentally Persistent Free Radicals, which are pollutants generated by hazardous waste that can linger in the environment for long periods of time. Dellinger led research that identified EPFRs as a distinct hazard, and prior to his work the pollutants hadn’t been proven to exist. The pollutants are a particular danger at Superfund sites, where hazardous waste is disposed and often unmaintained or abandoned. Louisiana is home to 25 Superfund sites. The center is currently examining the increased danger that EPFRs pose when mixed with water or other solvents. The grant will allow for extended, collaborative research into the environmental threat. The center started up in 2009 with an original NIEHS grant of $3.8 million. “No one knows what’s next for this grant—you can’t know with science like this,” Dellinger says. “But if we could determine, say, a spike in hospital admissions during times we know these EPFRs to have reached a fever pitch, well, that’s a game changer.”