About the Seminar:

Disinfection by-products (DBPs) and per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are two high profile contaminants of concern in drinking water.  Several DBPs are currently regulated by the U.S. EPA and others are being considered.  EPA also recently announced its new regulation for 6 PFAS in drinking water.  Part 1 of this seminar will detail results from a recent study to identify important DBP forcing factors of toxicity in drinking water, with promising strategies to remove them.  Part 2 will detail our development of two new Total Organic Fluorine (TOF) methods to more comprehensively capture PFAS, as well as the application of one of these new methods to map PFAS hotspots in South Carolina.  These combustion ion chromatography methods report the lowest detection limits to-date (0.1 µg/L and 0.3 µg/L) for extractable organic fluorine and adsorbable organic fluorine methods, respectively, as well as higher recoveries for a larger number of PFAS compounds (43), including legacy PFAS and new PFAS replacements.  Using these new TOF methods, substantially higher TOF values were measured in industrial wastewater, river water, and air samples compared to liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), demonstrating how TOF methods provided a more comprehensive measurement of the total PFAS present, capturing known and unknown organic fluorine.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Susan Richardson is the Arthur Sease Williams Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Carolina and was formerly at the U.S. EPA for many years.  Her research surrounds the study of emerging contaminants in water.  She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2024), Executive Editor and Associate Editor for Environmental Science & Technology, past President of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry (2020-2022), and received the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award for Creative Advancements in Environmental Science & Technology (2008), an Honorary Doctorate from Cape Breton University (2006), an AAAS Fellow (2019), an ACS Fellow (2016), the Herty Medal (2020), the Southern Chemist Award (2020), the Walter J. Weber, Jr. AEESP Frontier in Research Award (2021), and the Analytical Scientist Power List (2024, 2023, 2021, and 2019).  Over her career, she has published 214 articles, given 395 invited presentations and seminars (including 78 plenaries/keynotes) and 198 contributed presentations.  She has a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Emory University and a B.S. in Chemistry & Mathematics from Georgia College & State University.