The Asarco smelter shutdown more than 30 years ago but the plant's legacy is still being felt. Lead and arsenic emitted from the smelter's smokestack contaminated the soil and found its way into local lakes. UW Tacoma Associate Professor Jim Gawel joins us to discuss his work. Gawel and a team of researchers is examining arsenic in local lakes including Lake Killarney in Federal Way. Gawel will also talk about the importance of getting students into the field and the chair in his office that's so nice no one will sit in it.
The Asarco smelter shutdown more than 30 years ago but the plant's legacy is still being felt. Lead and arsenic emitted from the smelter's smokestack contaminated the soil and found its way into local lakes. UW Tacoma Associate Professor Jim Gawel joins us to discuss his work. Gawel and a team of researchers is examining arsenic in local lakes including Lake Killarney in Federal Way. Gawel will also talk about the importance of getting students into the field and the chair in his office that's so nice no one will sit in it.
Asarco for a very short time, had the tallest stack in the area, and that was a way to kind of disperse the pollution farther away with the idea to improve things. But it turns out that just spreads your problem around
Speaker 2:from UDub Tacoma. This is pod defiance. Welcome to pod defiance where we don't lecture, but we do educate. I'm your host Sarah Smith. Today on the pod, the Sarco arsenic and lakes with UDaB Tacoma, associate professor Jim Gallo, the Asarco smelter, left behind a legacy of pollution in Tacoma and other parts of Western Washington. We'll talk with gal about the arsenic in local lakes, left behind by the smelters. We'll also discuss Gallo's dedication to student research, his love of rock climbing and the chair in his office. That's almost too nice to sit in.
Speaker 3:All right. I'm here with Dr. James. Gal or Jim as he likes to be called, right? Yes, please. Okay. Because,
Speaker 1:Oh, uh, I don't even let my students call me. Uh, dr gal. So Jim, go by. Jim makes me feel younger. Okay,
Speaker 3:that's good. All right. Well do you want to briefly talk a little bit about what you do at university of Washington Tacoma and tell us a little bit about your work in limnology?
Speaker 1:Sure. Uh, so I've been a professor now at UDaB to for 20 years, 20 plus years at this point, uh, and teaching all kinds of things and environmental science and environmental engineering. And limnology is just one part of what I teach, but, um, it's basically the study of freshwater, but I focus on lakes. Um, so in my case, I started getting into Lake speck before I came to Washington state. And then when I came out here, I was looking for something to study. And, uh, it turns out there's lots of lakes right around here. So I started working on that end of things. So I teach classes on lakes, uh, and I do research on lakes. So what is it about lakes that you find so interesting? Uh, question. Um, one I like anything that gets me outside and call it work. Um, so in this case, uh, lakes are something that's interesting from an environmental chemistry standpoint, which is what I study. And I got into them, well originally I got into them because when I was a kid I used to go out on lakes and swim and do all that kind of thing. And so I thought that doing work on lakes sounded like a lot of fun. And then I get paid for going out and being on lakes. And so when I was in Boston before I came here, I happened to get opportunity to do some work on a contaminated Lake just outside of Boston called spy pond. Uh, and they had treated spy pond with arsenic back in the day, used to use it as an algaecide. Uh, so they actually treated the pond with arsenic. And of course arsenic is a metal, so it never goes away. It just kinda builds up. So we were studying what was going on with that old arsenic that had been sitting in the Lake. And so, um, that got me really interested in lakes because I was interested in metal chemistry. And then when I came out here, it just happened to be that lo and behold, it's another place where there's arsenic contamination in Lake. So it's kind of how it all worked out.
Speaker 3:So for people who aren't from around here, can you maybe talk a little bit about the Asarco smelter and the arsenic in the lakes?
Speaker 1:Uh, so a Sarco was a smelter that operated just in Rustin, Washington, um, which became a city actually because of the smelters. So it was a company town, uh, originally. Um, and so it incorporated around that smelter. Uh, so it, uh, amazingly took, uh, different, like metal ores from around the, the world actually that would be shipped in to Tacoma. And then they would more or less processed that to get the metals out. So in this case, they originally were a lead smelter cause there was money to be made by making, getting led and then it quickly became a copper smelter back in the early 19 hundreds. So it started back in 1895 I think. Um, so it was going on for a while doing that. But it turned out that the, the, or that they were getting happened to be high in arsenic naturally and there was money to be made by making arsenic and selling it. Cause people used it for herbicides and pesticides at that time. So they actually started to, uh, pull out that arsenic that they got out of the, um, out of the or, uh, so that, uh, unfortunately would, I mean that part of it's great. The problem is that smelting operations that are notoriously bad at kind of cleaning up their effluence or their air emissions. And so Asarco for a very short time had the tallest stack in the area and that was a way to kind of disperse the pollution farther away with the idea to improve things. But it turns out that just spreads your problem around.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Okay. Well, so how far, how far did that pollution extend then? I mean, obviously in the water, but in the air, I'm guessing that would probably end up in lakes that are not close to Tacoma. And, uh, how far does your work on that reach? Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Air emissions? Uh, a lot of them made it pretty far. Um, they can go quite a distance and so to the North, that made it definitely into Lake Washington, so made it up at least 30 miles that direction. Uh, so they've seen, you can actually see the signature of the oldest Sarco, uh, uh, emissions in the sediments of Lake Washington. Uh, most of the stuff that I do spreads out about, uh, 10, 15 kilometers. So up in the federal way and King County and then down into Pierce County as most of the stuff that I do.
Speaker 3:So let's talk a little bit then about kind of what you're looking at. What do you, what do you look for in the legs to walk me through kind of what you do?
Speaker 1:So first, when I came out here and I heard, well, the reason I heard that there was an arsenic thing going on was that I found out I got a notice at my house that, uh, my house could be contaminated with arsenic and lead from this Asarco smelter. And, um, one being a first time homeowner, I was like, well, that's a bummer. Uh, so I have to deal with this. But then second, I was thinking, well, this is really interesting because I'm an environmental chemist and nice study metal pollution. And so I'm the only person who thinks, Oh yeah, cool. Um, there's arsenic and lead in the area. Um, so when I found that out, I looked around at what was out there and really there was a little bit of stuff done in lakes, but not much. Most of it had just been looking at soils and things. So, um, I decided with my students to go out as part of our class to start collecting some information and collecting some data out on some of these lakes and uh, found the arsenic in the sediments. Cause that's what would eventually happen is the IRS and it kind of builds up and so you can see that signature. So we found that sure enough, there's plenty of arsenic in the sediments that kind of got transported there by the old stack. And so then I, the interest is, well, if it's just in the sediments, then it's not really a problem. It doesn't have so much of an exposure issue to people or to other organisms. So the next thing is to figure out whether it comes out of the sediment. So it turns out that's the, the problem part of arsenic is that it can come back out readily out of the sediments back into the water and be taken up by organisms and move through the food chain. So, um, we found that, that for sure that some of these lakes, we're actually transporting Ark arsenic back out. And so we got then kind of followed on that to figure out, okay, so now that it's getting into the water, is it getting into the organisms and so on. So that's sort of what I do is sort of look for how metals move around in the environment. How do they potentially, uh, become an exposure issue and then how do they get transported up into organisms and do they cause a problem? Do they actually cause a biological effect that we're worried about?
Speaker 3:Have you answered that question at all? I mean, obviously I live in Tacoma too, so I remember getting those, those pamphlets when we moved here and thinking, Oh, okay, well I have kids and I don't want to expose them to something that's potentially harmful. But what I guess what kind of a an effect does that, does arsenic have on, you know, animals or people or what should we be aware of? I guess it's, well that's part of what we went into it kind of
Speaker 1:both at humans and an ecosystem health. So we were also interested in whether there'd be some effect on animals and sort of aquatic life. So we worked their weight up. So we started looking at the base of the food chain looking at plankton, so the little microscopic plants and animals that are in the Lake. And so what we found was that certain lakes actually transport our, snuck out of the sediments better. And the problem ones are the ones that are shallow. Uh, and what happens is that they actually transport arsenic out of the sediments, but then it gets up into the part of the Lake where there's oxygen present. So that's where the organisms live, cause they all oxygen to breathe. And so what we're finding is in these shallow lakes that really don't get studied much, that you get arsenic in the presence of the organisms, which causes really high concentrations to get into the organisms. So the phytoplankton had super high, like 700 parts per million of arsenic in the organisms and then then it starts to get transported through the food chain. So it goes, the nice thing is it's not like mercury, it doesn't go up as it goes up the food chain. So it doesn't bio magnify it actually, um, bio diminishes. So it actually goes down as it goes through the food chain because you can excrete it so humans can actually excrete arsenic. Um, so that's what we found is that as it goes up, it does go down, but it's still at pretty high concentrations and his old plankton and then it, we've studied snails and crayfish and fish and it definitely is getting into all of those. And now whether that's at problem levels, that's what we're trying to figure out right now. So working with the department of health to try to figure out what that, that concentration in those organisms mean for people who might actually eat those things. Because it turns out that people do eat snails, crayfish and fish. Um, we don't have, we, we monitor fish, right? We know something about that. We sort of expect people to do that, but it turns out crayfish and snails are also harvested by people and yet there's no monitoring for them and there's no fishery to know how many people are catching them or how many people are eating them. So that's our interest at this time.
Speaker 4:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:Hey everyone, it's Sarah. I wanted to take a minute to talk about a story we recently ran on the university's home page. The article is about UDaB Tacoma alumnus Marco burrow. Hos Marco is a first generation student that graduated in 2018 with a degree in environmental science. He now works in Gallo's lab helping process samples from local lakes. Brah hus loves to get his hands dirty when he's not up to his knees and muck. He's up to his elbows in grease working on cars. Brah has plans to pursue graduate school and he's interested in water quality and plans to pursue that as a career. Read the rest of[inaudible] story on the UDaB to come a website.
Speaker 4:[inaudible].
Speaker 3:So let's switch gears a little bit. Um, can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with Wapato Lake here in Tacoma?
Speaker 1:Uh, so a lot of these lakes I've gotten sort of into or gotten, uh, invested in because I went there with my class. So originally I went to Wapato just collecting data with my limnology class as a way to do real things with my students. So we try to not just do busy work assignments, so we try to collect data on lakes that somebody wants to know something about and then we share that information. So originally we went to Wapato just as a class assignment and collect some info. And we knew at that time Wapato was going through one of its bad phases. Um, so it was super green, choked with algae, um, and was having these harmful algae blooms. So these toxic blooms that would shut down the Lake for contact and, and swimming. And so because it just happened to be that we were collecting data on this Lake. So when they decided to do something about it, they wanted somebody to be involved in sort of doing some work after they did a treatment on the Lake. And so, um, they, the reason they did that was they did a treatment on the Lake and they kind of messed up. Uh, and so they killed all the fish in the process of treating the Lake and turns into electric blue. And, um, it did work. It was just a problem with the way that the pH went in the Lake. Um, so it cleaned up the Lake, but they wanted to monitor it after that. So my group got involved in doing a whole year long study, um, with students and, and, uh, staff and myself. And so we did that for a year and we've gone back and done some subsequent work when they've gone and treated again, cause the problem keeps coming back. So they went and did just another treatment a few years ago. So we've, because of our history of being involved there, we get asked to come in and be a part of those projects. So, um,[inaudible] one of those difficult urban lakes that just gets a lot of nutrient inputs and run off pollution, it basically drains most of South Tacoma goes into this one little Lake. So it ends up it's going to be a tough thing to, to treat overall for a long time. And that's fertilizers and things that are getting into the Lake causing that algae to bloom. Is that exactly. So it's nothing, it's not an industrial source. It tends to be all your runoff from your yard, so you pet waste and, and all that kind of things. So, um, yeah, for a while it was, that was the notorious thing back in the days that it turned out that Tacoma mall sewage was actually going into Apatow Lake because they had connected the pipes wrong. Uh, but they figured that out eventually and fix that problem. Uh, but at this point it's basically urban runoff that goes in there. So I read that you're trying to organize a statewide volunteer Lake monitoring program. We've been working for a while though. Washington Lake protection association is an organization that I was the president of for awhile, um, and on the board for a long time. So it's a group that's interested in trying to advocate for lakes and to improve like, uh, quality and Lake usage. And so, um, one of the things that we don't have in this state is actually a program that monitors the health of lakes. Um, there was a program for a while that got its funding cut, uh, back in the 1990s, I believe it was. And so really there hasn't been much kind of on and off sampling for a few things whenever there's a specific issue, but there's really not a good set of data that shows us how lakes are doing over time. And so part of what we want to do is try to get information that helps manage those lakes. So it shows, starts to show us when something starts to become a problem, it starts to, it gives us some data to compare to. Um, and it also gets people whole idea behind the volunteer part is getting people in and knowledgeable about what's going on in their Lake so that they advocate for improving the Lake quality or for decreasing yard runoff or actually dealing with fertilizer and things along those lines. So it's kind of for two purposes, it's to get the public really interested and knowledgeable about what's going on so that they're the people that are pushing for change. And at the same time it's also trying to collect some information so we can see when there is problems or if there's anything that's, you know, changing over time that we can, we can cut off early when we recognize that there's a problem that's coming up.
Speaker 3:So you, you mentioned that you have a passion for combining your teaching and getting students out in, out in the field and, and doing actual science while they're in class, not just lecturing. And can you talk a little bit about that? Did that come from a personal experience you had? Do you feel like, what does that mean to you? I would say
Speaker 1:didn't come from when I was an undergrad. We never got an opportunity to do anything like that. Um, I was in a relatively traditional civil engineering program. Uh, we didn't even learn how to write as part of my program. Um, which is kind of interesting cause that's the first thing you're asked to do when you graduate is to actually go write something. But you know, there was no opportunity really, um, in that to do that kind of work. I really got interested in that when I was in grad school. Um, there was a program at MIT where the you would actually bring on high school students or undergrads to work with you. Um, so the high school students were worked with me for a summer. The undergrads would work on research projects and it was a really cool way to involve, um, other people in getting interested in doing research. Um, when they're not doing the sort of running the research themselves. And I just saw that like the benefits of that. I have actually ran into one of the high school students that work with me. She's now more or less than EPA official for the, for Taiwan. And so ran into her someplace and she was talking about how big a deal that was and you know, how it sort of influenced her and, and so it's really, yeah, I get evidence of from those former students of how much, how big a deal it is. I even ran into this last week, I ran into, uh, a former undergrad that worked with me at MIT 20 years ago, who's now works for the silent spring Institute doing research for public change and things along those lines. So I just, I, I've seen it do really cool things for students and for me, I get something out of it. I love working. I don't like working by myself. I love working with other people and I, and I learned that I like to teach that way. So just by working with people and learning how to involve them in things so that they feel invested in something and learning something in the process is always been something that I've gotten passionate about. So, um, that was I think the first real experience that I had in it. And so I was really happy when I came here and it was a focus of an undergraduate institution. So that was something I was looking for by that point when I was looking jobs as someplace where I could really combine teaching and research in the same place
Speaker 3:as a student. That feels really impactful too, to be able to get out there and kind of see what, what you've been learning about for, for weeks. We did that in my oceanography class. We got to go out on a boat and do some sampling in the water and it was really exciting. It was really fun. Yeah, it's great. It's nice when it works out. Yeah,
Speaker 1:too. Cause I think, um, it's not always glamorous, right? I think, at least not the stuff that my students do. So, you know, we've been doing outdoor research for a long time, so yeah, it's really nice to be on a Lake in the summertime. But in February when you're having to break the ice with an or that you have in the boat so you can actually get out and sample'em when it's below freezing is like the fun comes,
Speaker 3:I guess it's type two or three fun I think. Yeah. But that's real world experience. I mean that's, Oh yeah, it's real world. All right. Yeah. So that passion also extends to the community. I read something about you working with students at the science and math Institute it, besides getting
Speaker 1:the undergrads involved, I also recognize that what I'm trying to do is get more students interested in science and mathematics and we um, originally when I first got here, part of it was we were only an upper division campus at that point. And so I was trying to get students that, that the community colleges invested in coming on and doing more science and stuff in environmental science with, with us. And so we started doing partnerships with the community colleges to try to get them their students involved in research projects early on. So they also would kind of continue and be invested. And then we recognize that what we're also doing is we're missing a lot of students cause they lose interest in science and math early on in the middle schools or high schools. And so I feel as a scientist that, um, what we need to do is really recruit, especially underrepresented students at that level. So I've tried to involve high school students and middle school students in projects, real authentic research projects so that they can see themselves as researchers, as scientists, so they will continue and, and, and think that that's something they can actually do as a career. So I've done a couple of different research projects, all of all sorts with, um, with K-12 students and, and I help develop curriculum right now to try to make it easier for teachers to incorporate that research into their standards that they actually do in the classroom. So, um, we do us a project called search, um, which is an acronym for a really long thing that I can't remember off the top of my head cause I came up with it. Um, but it has to do with basically involving that authentic research. So we've done by, a lot of it has to do with pollution monitoring. So we've looked at muscles. So we use like the muscles in the, uh, in Puget sound as a way to monitor pollution that comes in. We've done insects. So the same idea using aquatic insects is monitoring agents. Um, so there's been a bunch of these and I've had Sammy the science and math. I've had Lincoln high school students, I've had sodas, students, I've had first Creek middle school students and more.
Speaker 3:I was excited to read about your involvement with, with filmmaking too, and the Puyallup watershed documentary film competition. So I want to hear all about that cause that's, you know, I'm a science communication nerd.
Speaker 1:I got into a film stuff totally from the back end. Um, so I was still at MIT and we were involved in a, uh, a project that was kind of comparing watersheds in multiple countries on multiple continents. And, uh, this group was to go, so it was involved, uh, a university from Switzerland in Zurich, um, or outside Zurich. We had another one that was in Tokyo and then the one at MIT that was in, uh, Boston. And then even some in South America. And there's this idea of, well, what can we do as a group that kind of does this comparative thing? And I came up with this idea. I had just watched, um, a civil action, which is a movie where John Travolta plays a lawyer, which is a really bad idea, but he does in a movie. Um, but I had read the book, um, before, um, and it's basically about super fund and this idea of how contamination potentially gets into the community. And one of the things that was obvious from there is that a lot of these things that we study are not visible to the public. And so we were really interested in, in this idea about comparing across watersheds. How do you make that visible? And so I, I shot off my mouth at some point and said, well, what we really should do is make a documentary about, you know, these sort of invisible problems so that people can see what's going on. And, and the people in the room. So that's a great idea. You should do it. And I said, I've never made any movie. I don't even have a camera. Um, so, uh, I got put in charge of the project and so about that time I moved to, um, take the job here in Tacoma. And so I actually made that first documentary while here using, uh, people, students and one student in one staff member at UDub Tacoma. So we traveled to, to Switzerland and Tokyo and Boston to shoot the whole video and made our first documentary. And so somehow that came out really well and, um, we did a good job, but the problem was at that point now I lived somewhere else and people are really, I find it really easy to say that, well, this happened somewhere else that's not really applicable to me. So we made a second one here. Um, that was all about the polyp river. And that just got me into that idea of how video can work really well to get messages across. So the competition was an idea to take the peolpe river watershed and get everybody to try to make short videos that we could use to get public, get out to the public, what kinds of issues with these sort of invisible things that were going on and have it turned it into a competition. So we've run it twice actually. And uh, I've gotten some good, see how students, we have like grade school, uh, like version and then we have the high schools and college and then the, the, the pros. And so we've gotten really fun stuff out of it and it's pretty amazing what everybody comes up with. So, um, we're hoping to do that again soon actually. What do you think video does to kind of bridge the divide between science and, I keep saying regular people, but just, you know, nonscientists what do you think, what do you think video does? It's just a visual way to take something that's more complex, I guess I would say. And I do also think that people, people, even in science, we do a lot of things with posters and talks, but we've learned, we've actually learned in the communication of science that you need to show things pictorially as much as you can. So even when you're doing posters or talks, you're not showing a lot of words. You're showing images. And so video is just another like a longer way or a more involved way of actually getting those messages across. It also helps you get it across when you're not there. Um, and people are more likely to watch the video than they are to read a paper, uh, even if you write that paper very well. So I think that's really what it's all about. It's about trying to communicate science to people and video just ends up working a lot better. And one of the things we've learned over time, so as soon as I made this documentary, it was like 60 minutes long. I was like, well, that's too long, right? People don't like to watch things that long unless it's a blockbuster. So, um, so then you just have to get shorter. So I think it's about that whole idea of, it's interesting cause I feel like science and engineering have learned that we have to, like we've been told we need to communicate with people so they can understand us. And so it's been a lot bigger push in science to try to get across those things in different ways. I don't know if that's true everywhere. I want to ask you about rock climbing because you teach rock climbing with Tacoma mountaineers. I do, yeah. How'd you get into rock climbing? Good question. Again, it has to do with, one is I like to be outside, so anything that gets me outside, I love hiking, kayaking, everything. And then at some point when we were grad students in Boston, a friend of ours was doing some of this and we're like, Oh that sounds fun. Do you know some other reason to go outside? And it turns out there's a few boulders around Boston. So we went and climbed out there and had a good time. It was like, Ooh, this is really fun. And then we moved out here and it turns out there's a whole lot of big rocks around here. And in looking for something, a community to get involved with when we moved out here cause we had no connections family-wise. Um, the mountaineers in Tacoma is a great group. It's kind of the perfect size. You get to know people really well and everybody wants to go outside and do things. And so we got invested there and got really interested in rock climbing. I've done a lot of stuff in the mountains around here. So again, I like giving back. So it was really nice way to meet new people and um, to continue to go out and get climbing yourself is to go out and take others climbing. So yeah, so for almost 20 years at this point, we've been helping teach some their rock climbing classes and things there. And now I'm taking people outside and actually rock climbing. So it's still one of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 3:So do you, do you get to go sample Alpine lakes ever and bridge both worlds?
Speaker 1:Uh, nothing that requires rock climbing. That would be really fun, uh, to actually haul of our research equipment up a rock and then get to an Alpine Lake. Um, luckily. Yeah, exactly. That's coming right, right next. Yeah. But we have, I do stuff. Um, one of my research projects is at spirit Lake, which is at Mount st Helens. So we do actually have to hike in all of our equipment there. So it's about an hour hike each way. And we've been doing work on this Lake that was affected by the eruption of Mount st Helens and that's been a blast. So I've been doing that for almost 15 years at this point where we, um, look at the effects of, of the aftermath basically of that disruption and how it affects Lake. So another Lake project I'm interested in.
Speaker 3:I like that you said it's a blast too. That was the unintended volcano pun. So there's this chair in your office that I've heard about and it's a really beautiful chair. It's almost legendary on the campus. Uh, can you talk to us about this? This chair that's almost too nice to sit in and, and describe it to us.
Speaker 1:So the chair in reference here. So I have two, two chairs in my office and one of them was given to me by my parents, uh, when I graduated from MIT. So it's an MIT chair, um, has it, has this insignia on the back and it, it is, it's just, it's a wooden chair, so it looks nice in the office and it's kind of hoity. Toity it's not really, it doesn't fit in necessarily with me or the rest of my office, which is a mess. Um, but it's this one really nice chair. So I think it stands out really nicely because the rest of the office looks like a pigsty. And, but the funny thing is, because there are two chairs, nobody feels comfortable sitting in the nice chair, so they always try to sit in the other one. So it's become somewhat of a psychological experiment. So I'll even leave my jackets and stuff on top of the other chair. Uh, and people will move those over so they can sit in that chair and not sit on the nice chair. So yeah, at this point, it's kind of just my own psychological experiment to see what people would do with that, but it means something to me cause my parents sort of gave it to me. But otherwise it, it ends up being a really nice chair because nobody will sit in it.
Speaker 2:Thank you to our guests and thank you for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe. You can find us on Spotify, Google podcasts, pocket cast, Stitcher, and Apple podcasts.