Twenty scientists and engineers at the 天美影视传媒 are among the 38 new members elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences for 2021, according to a July 15 . New members were chosen for 鈥渢heir outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the Academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.鈥�

Current academy members selected 29 of the new members. An additional nine were elected by virtue of joining one of the National Academies.

New UW members who were elected by current academy members are:

• , professor and Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at UW Tacoma, director of the and science director of the , 鈥渇or foundational work on the environmental fate, behavior and toxicity of PCBs.鈥�
• , professor of psychology, 鈥渇or contributions in research on racial and gender inequality that has influenced practices in education, government, and business鈥� and 鈥渇or shifting the explanation for inequality away from individual deficiencies and examining how societal stereotypes and structures cause inequalities.鈥�
• , professor of chemistry and member faculty at the , 鈥渇or leadership in the innovative synthesis and chemical modification of nanoscale materials for application in light emission and catalysis.鈥�
• , professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences, and founding director of the , 鈥渇or work on the health impacts of climate change, on climate impact forecasting, on adaptation to climate change and on climate policy to protect health.鈥�
• , professor of environmental and forest sciences and dean emeritus of the College of the Environment, 鈥渇or foundational studies of regional paleoenvironmental history and sustained excellence in academic leadership to catalyze and sustain transformative research and educational initiatives.鈥� Graumlich is also president-elect of the American Geophysical Union.
• Dr. , the Joseph W. Eschbach Endowed Chair in Kidney Research and co-director of the , 鈥渇or pioneering contributions and outstanding achievements in the development of the novel wearable artificial kidney, as well as numerous investigator-initiated clinical trials and multi-center collaborative studies.鈥�
• , professor of environmental chemistry and chair of the Physical Sciences Division at UW Bothell, 鈥渇or leadership in monitoring and understanding the global transport of atmospheric pollutants from energy production, wildfire, and other sources, as well as science communication and service that has informed citizens and enhanced public policy.鈥�
• , professor and chair of psychology, 鈥渇or contributions demonstrating how psychological science can inform long-standing issues about racial and gender discrimination鈥� and 鈥渇or research that has deep and penetrating implications for the law and societal efforts to remedy social inequities with evidence-based programs and actions.鈥�
• , the Leon C. Johnson Professor of Chemistry, member faculty at the and chair of the Department of Chemistry, 鈥渇or developing new spectroscopy tools for measuring energy flow in molecules and materials with high spatial and temporal resolution.鈥�
• , professor of astronomy, 鈥渇or founding the and leading the decades-long development of the interdisciplinary modeling framework and community needed to establish the science of exoplanet astrobiology鈥� and 鈥渇or training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists who will search for life beyond Earth.鈥�
• , professor and chair of aeronautics and astronautics, 鈥渇or leadership and significant advances in nonlinear methods for integrated sensing and control in engineered, bioinspired and biological flight systems鈥� and 鈥渇or leadership in cross-disciplinary aerospace workforce development.鈥�
• , associate professor of chemistry and member faculty with the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, 鈥渇or exceptional contributions to the development of synthetic polymers and nanomaterials for self-assembly and advanced manufacturing with application in sustainability, medicine and microelectronics.鈥�
• Dr. , Associate Dean of Medical Technology Innovation in the College of Engineering and the School of Medicine, the Graham and Brenda Siddall Endowed Chair in Cornea Research, and medical director of the UW Eye Institute, 鈥渇or developing and providing first class clinical treatment of severe corneal blindness to hundreds of people, for establishing the world premier artificial cornea program in Washington, and for leading collaborative research to translate innovative engineering technologies into creative clinical solution.鈥�
• Dr. , professor of medicine and director of the , 鈥渇or global recognition as an authority on drug and vaccine development for viral and parasitic diseases through work as an infectious disease physician and immunologist.鈥�
• Dr. , professor of pediatrics and of anesthesiology and pain medicine, and director of the , 鈥渇or outstanding leadership in pediatric anesthesiology and in the care of children with traumatic brain injury鈥� and 鈥渇or internationally recognized expertise in traumatic brain injury and direction of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center for the last decade as an exceptional mentor and visionary leader.鈥�

UW members who will join the Washington State Academy of Sciences by virtue of their election to one of the National Academies are:

• , professor of biostatistics, 鈥渇or the development of novel statistical models for longitudinal data to better diagnose disease, track its trajectory, and predict its outcomes鈥� and 鈥渇or revolutionizing how dynamic predictors are judged by their discrimination and calibration and has significantly advanced methods for randomized controlled trials.鈥� Heagerty was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
• , the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, 鈥渇or foundational contributions to the mathematics of computer systems and of the internet, as well as to the design and probabilistic analysis of algorithms, especially on-line algorithms, and algorithmic mechanism design and game theory.鈥� Karlin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor emeritus of applied mathematics and data science fellow at the , 鈥渇or inventing key algorithms for hyperbolic conservation laws and transforming them into powerful numerical technologies鈥� and 鈥渇or creating the Clawpack package, which underpins a wide range of application codes in everyday use, such as for hazard assessment due to tsunamis and other geophysical phenomena.鈥� LeVeque was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , the Benjamin D. Hall Endowed Chair in Basic Life Sciences and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 鈥渇or advancing our physical understanding of cell motility and growth in animals and bacteria鈥� and 鈥渇or discovering how the pathogen Listeria uses actin polymerization to move inside human cells, how crawling animal cells coordinate actomyosin dynamics and the mechanical basis of size control and daughter cell separation in bacteria.鈥� Theriot was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor and chair of biological structure, 鈥渇or elucidating cellular transformations through which neurons pattern their dendrites, and the interplay of activity-dependent and -independent mechanisms leading to assembly of stereotyped circuits鈥� and 鈥渇or revelations regarding the fundamental principles of neuronal development through the application of an elegant combination of in vivo imaging, physiology, ultrastructure and genetics to the vertebrate retina.鈥� Wong was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

New members to the Washington State Academy of Sciences are scheduled to be inducted at a meeting in September.

Every fall more than half of the coho salmon that return to Puget Sound’s urban streams die before they can spawn. In some streams, all of them die. But scientists didn’t know why.

Now a team led by researchers at the 天美影视传媒 Tacoma, UW and Washington State University Puyallup have discovered the answer. When it rains, stormwater flushes bits of aging vehicle tires on roads into neighboring streams. The killer is in the mix of chemicals that leach from tire wear particles: a molecule related to a preservative that keeps tires from breaking down too quickly.

This research Dec. 3 in Science.

“Most people think that we know what chemicals are toxic and all we have to do is control the amount of those chemicals to make sure water quality is fine. But, in fact, animals are exposed to this giant chemical soup and we don’t know what many of the chemicals in it even are,” said co-senior author , an associate professor in both the UW Tacoma Division of Sciences & Mathematics and the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

“Here we started with a mix of 2,000 chemicals and were able to get all the way down to this one highly toxic chemical, something that kills large fish quickly and we think is probably found on every single busy road in the world.”

are born in freshwater streams. After spending the first year of their lives there, these fish make the epic journey out to sea where they live out most of their adult lives. A few 鈥� 鈥� return to their original streams to lay their eggs, or spawn, before dying. But researchers started noticing that, especially after a big rain, returning salmon were dying before they could spawn. The search for the coho-killer started with investigating the water quality of the creeks, a multi-agency effort led by NOAA-Fisheries and including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, King County, Seattle Public Utilities and the Wild Fish Conservancy.

“We had determined it couldn’t be explained by high temperatures, low dissolved oxygen or any known contaminant, such as high zinc levels,” said co-senior author , an assistant professor at WSU’s School of the Environment, based in Puyallup. “Then we found that urban stormwater runoff could recreate the symptoms and the acute mortality. That’s when Ed’s group reached out to see if they could help us understand what was going on chemically.”

First the team narrowed down what in stormwater runoff could be behind the symptoms. All creek samples contained a chemical signature associated with tire wear particles. In addition, a study led by McIntyre found that a solution made from tire wear particles was highly toxic to salmon.

But tire wear particles are a mixture of hundreds of different chemicals, so the team had a challenge ahead: How to find the culprit?

The researchers started by sectioning the tire wear particle solution according to different chemical properties, such as removing all metals from the solution. Then they tested the different solutions to see which ones were still toxic to salmon in the lab. They repeated this process until only a few chemicals remained, including one that appeared to dominate the mixture but didn’t match anything known.

Researchers used a multi-step chemical separation process to narrow down the list of possible salmon-killing culprits from thousands of chemicals to one. This animation, which shows different chemicals (dots) being separated based on a chemical commonality, is a simplified illustration of that process. Rebecca Gourley/天美影视传媒

“There were periods last year when we thought we might not be able to get this identified. We knew that the chemical that we thought was toxic had 18 carbons, 22 hydrogens, two nitrogens and two oxygens. And we kept trying to figure out what it was,” said lead author , a research scientist at the at UW Tacoma. “Then one day in December, it was just like bing! in my mind. The killer chemical might not be a chemical directly added to the tire, but something related.”

Tian searched a list of chemicals known to be in tire rubber for anything that might be similar to their unknown 鈥� give or take a few hydrogens, oxygens or nitrogens 鈥斅� and found something called 6PPD, which is used to keep tires from breaking down too quickly.

“It’s like a preservative for tires,” Tian said. “Similar to how food preservatives keep food from spoiling too quickly, 6PPD helps tires last by protecting them from ground-level ozone.”

Ozone, a gas created when pollutants emitted by cars and other chemical sources react in the sunlight, breaks the bonds holding the tire together. 6PPD helps by reacting with ozone before it can react with the tire rubber, sparing the tires.

But when 6PPD reacts with ozone, the researchers found that it was transformed into multiple chemicals, including 6PPD-quinone (pronounced “kwih-known”), the toxic chemical that is responsible for killing the salmon.

This chemical is not limited to the Puget Sound region. The team also tested roadway runoff from Los Angeles and urban creeks near San Francisco, and 6PPD-quinone was present there as well. This finding is unsurprising, the researchers said, because 6PPD appears to be used in all tires and tire wear particles are likely present in creeks near busy roads across the world.

Now that 6PPD-quinone has been identified as the “smoking gun” behind coho death in freshwater streams, the team can start to understand why this chemical is so toxic.

“How does this quinone lead to toxicity in coho? Why are other species of salmon, such as chum salmon, so much less sensitive?” McIntyre asked. “We have a lot to learn about which other species are sensitive to stormwater or 6PPD-quinone within, as well as outside, of the Puget Sound region.”

One way to protect salmon and other creatures living in the creeks is to treat stormwater before it hits the creeks. But, while tests have shown that there are effective environmentally friendly stormwater technologies for removing 6PPD-quinone, it would be almost impossible to build a treatment system for every road, the team added.

Another option is to change the composition of the tires themselves to make them “salmon-safe.”

“Tires need these preservative chemicals to make them last,” Kolodziej said. “It’s just a question of which chemicals are a good fit for that and then carefully evaluating their safety for humans, aquatic organisms, etc. We’re not sure what alternative chemical we would recommend, but we do know that chemists are really smart and have many tools in their toolboxes to figure out a safer chemical alternative.”

Additional co-authors are , a postdoctoral research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology who completed this work at the Center for Urban Waters; , and at WSU Puyallup; , , and at UW Tacoma; , , , and at the University of Toronto Scarborough; at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project; Fan Hou, a doctoral student at China Agricultural University who completed this research at the UW; , Ximin Hu, and at the UW; , a postdoctoral research fellow at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who completed this research at the Center for Urban Waters; and at San Francisco Estuary Institute; at NOAA; and at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington State Governors Funds and the Regional Monitoring Program for Water Quality in San Francisco Bay.

For more information, contact Kolodziej at koloj@uw.edu, McIntyre at jen.mcintyre@wsu.edu and Tian at tianzy@uw.edu.

Grant numbers: NSF: 1608464 and 1803240, EPA: #01J18101 and #DW-014-92437301

The waters of Puget Sound support many species, including mussels, salmon and killer whales. But researchers know that runoff from land in the urbanized areas might contain chemicals that could harm these creatures, even if it’s not always clear which chemicals are the most harmful.

Existing methods track specific chemicals of known concern. Until recently, however, there was no way to find out what other potentially harmful compounds might be present in the water.

Using a new “non-targeted” approach, researchers at the 天美影视传媒 and UW Tacoma screened samples from multiple regions of Puget Sound to look for other concerning chemicals. The team identified 64 chemicals never detected before in this waterway. Eight chemicals were at potentially hazardous concentrations that will need further investigation. The team Dec. 30 in Environmental Science & Technology.

“Historically we’ve done a decent job of categorizing legacy chemicals in Puget Sound, but we also know there are a lot more chemicals that get into the water every day,” said senior author , a research scientist at the at UW Tacoma. “If we can understand what’s there and at what concentrations it’s occurring, then we can start to figure out which chemicals will likely impact the health of fish, killer whales and other marine organisms.”

The researchers collected water from 18 regions 鈥� from Port Townsend to Olympia 鈥� of Puget Sound’s nearshore, meaning the team collected the water samples while standing on docks or the shore, not a boat.

“Our sampling sites covered areas of different land use. For instance, we have relatively clean sites such as the Hood Canal near Holly, Washington, as well as urbanized or industrial sites such as the and the ,” said lead author , a research scientist at the Center for Urban Waters. “With such a wide range, we hoped to see a link between contamination and land use.”

The researchers collected water at the 18 sites multiple times over 2018, leading to 78 water samples. Then they used a method called high-resolution mass spectrometry to help them identify what chemicals were in each sample.

“Our method allows us to detect hundreds to thousands of chemicals at once in a single sample. It determines a compound’s mass really accurately,” said co-author , an associate professor in both the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the UW Tacoma Division of Sciences & Mathematics.

The researchers use the mass of each compound to figure out the chemical formula, and then use other information to identify it.

“On CSI when they have these instruments, they turn on the instrument and it tells them: ‘That’s ibuprofen.’ But in reality it’s a lot of work to get to get to a point where you are absolutely sure you know what that chemical really is,” Kolodziej said.

The team found at least 205 different chemicals across their samples. Of those compounds, researchers were able to reliably confirm the identity of 75, of which 64 were reported for the first time in Puget Sound.

The 75 confirmed chemicals included pesticides, herbicides, food additives and pharmaceuticals 鈥� antidepressants and blood pressure medications, for example 鈥� and compounds related to vehicles, such as tire rubber chemicals.

“Our goal is to really figure out which chemicals matter from a biological perspective 鈥� how a fish or a shellfish will react,” James said. “So we compared the levels of the chemicals we found to concentrations toxicologists have deemed concerning for marine life.”

The eight chemicals found at concerning levels were:

• Two vehicle-related contaminants that are found in tires and other sources
• The antidepressant drug Venlafaxine
• Two herbicides, including an aquatic one used for controlling weeds and algae
• Two chemicals found in plastics
• A called PFOS, which is known to be harmful to humans and animals

These concerning chemicals were localized to specific “hot spots” in Puget Sound, and most of them weren’t always present in different samples from the same site. This is in contrast to other chemicals that the team found in almost all of the samples but deemed less of a concern, such as the artificial sweetener Splenda and a drug used to treat seizures and bipolar disorder.

The next step, the researchers say, is to dive into what these data mean for marine life in the nearshore, specifically in shellfish and salmon. The team also hopes to continue to investigate the eight concerning chemicals and better understand the hot spots.

“Some way or another, a huge fraction of the things we buy and use end up in the rivers and Puget Sound,” Kolodziej said. “Everyone thinks chemicals hit the ocean and disappear because there’s so much water in the ocean that the concentrations go way down. But if you took the concentration of a chemical in wastewater effluent or storm water, it’s not like you can just divide by total water volume of Puget Sound, and that’s the concentration you’d detect in Puget Sound. The concentration in the nearshore is a lot higher because there hasn’t been enough time for mixing to occur. So exposure levels for aquatic organisms in the nearshore can be much higher than you might expect.”

Additional co-authors are , a postdoctoral research associate at the National Institute of Standards and Technology who completed this work as a research scientist at the Center for Urban Waters; , a lab manager at the Center for Urban Waters; , a doctoral student in the UW civil and environmental engineering department; Fan Hou, a doctoral student at China Agricultural University who completed this research as a visiting student at the UW; , an undergraduate student at UW Tacoma; and an environmental modeler at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This research was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

For more information, contact James at jamesca@uw.edu, Tian at tianzy@uw.edu and Kolodziej at koloj@uw.edu.

Grant number: 01J18101. This research has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Agency. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.

Spearheaded by the UW-based , the is meant to be a synthesis of the best available information for Puget Sound recovery from experts with state and federal agencies, academic institutions, tribes and organizations. A key starting point for the project, for example, was to incorporate the latest from the , a state agency and encyclopedia partner.

Organizers of the online-only encyclopedia want to create a network of researchers and students to provide content that regional scientists will review to ensure it is current and authoritative, according to UW’s , managing editor.

“We call what we’re trying to do curated crowdsourcing,” he said.

Organizers will officially launch the site, which has been online in a test version since May, with a panel discussion on new tools for networked science, the key to building something like the Encyclopedia of Puget Sound, Rice said. The , which is free and open to everyone, starts at 3:30 p.m. at the UW .

The panel discussion will be from 4 to 5 p.m., with Mary Ruckelshaus of the Natural Capital Project, Michael Pidwirny with the Encyclopedia of Earth, Tracy Barbaro with the Encyclopedia of Life and UW’s Jennifer Davison representing ScienceOnlineSeattle. The dean of the College of the Environment, , will moderate. A reception follows.

What makes the encyclopedia different from other databases and collections, Rice said, is its focus on the waters of the Salish Sea 鈥� Puget Sound and the straits of Georgia, Haro and Juan de Fuca 鈥� as well as the surrounding watersheds. The encyclopedia, for example, offers a of 6,000 plant and animal species that organizers anticipate will eventually include information about how each is faring in the Puget Sound region. Other places also offer species lists but they are generally broader and not specific to the Salish Sea, he said.

The encyclopedia has information from a wide variety of sources including scientific papers, official reports, maps and items by contributors. An on the northern red-legged frog, for instance, was researched and written by a UW student volunteer and edited by Rice.

“The encyclopedia is designed by Puget Sound scientists to benefit our community by being a fun 鈥� yet authoritative 鈥� ever-expanding resource,” said , UW Tacoma professor with the .

Members of a just-recruited editorial board plan to reach out to researchers in their disciplines to contribute content. In turn researchers are getting a tool they can use for such things as grant writing, to highlight their latest findings without having to create their own websites and as another way to show broader impacts from research.

The encyclopedia is one project under the , which Baker heads, that was created in 2011 with a $4 million, three-year from the EPA. The institute brings together scientists, engineers and policy makers working on the restoration and protection of Puget Sound and provide expert advice based on the best-available science, he said.

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For more information:
Baker, 253-254-7025, jebaker@u.washington.edu
Rice, 253-254-7030 Ext. 8008, jeffrice@uw.edu