Chorover Delivers a Keynote Address at the ACS Meeting

March 22, 2015

Dr. Jon Chorover, University of Arizona Superfund Research Program (UA SRP) investigator, was invited to give a Geochemistry Division Symposium keynote address at the 249th American Chemical Society National Meeting and Exposition. The meeting was held March 22-26, 2015 in Denver, CO, with a theme of “Chemistry of Natural Resources.”

The title of Chorover’s talk was “Iron, Sulfur, Carbon and Contaminants in the Critical Zone.” This talk focused on five years of multi-scale revegetation field and laboratory research pertaining to the Iron King Mine and Humboldt Smelter Superfund site in Dewey-Humboldt, AZ. Dr. He discussed aspects of formation and weathering of minerals in the Iron King mine tailings both in the presence and absence of plants. Results have shown that direct planting into compost-amended tailings accelerates the weathering process and that this results in decreased bioaccessibility of contaminants including arsenic, as measured by release in synthetic bio-fluids.

Chorover said the value of the symposium was that it “brought together researchers focused on understanding how the biogeochemical cycles of major elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, iron and sulfur, control the fate of contaminants in soils and sediments.”