A field campaign on an Oklahoma feedlot to measure aerosols in the atmosphere yielded surprising results.
A field campaign on an Oklahoma feedlot to measure aerosols in the atmosphere yielded surprising results.
Once in a while, scientific research resembles detective work. Researchers head into the field with a hypothesis and high hopes of finding specific results, but sometimes, there’s a twist in the story that requires a deeper dive into the data.
That was the case for CU Boulder researchers who led a field campaign in an agricultural region of Oklahoma. Using a high-tech instrument to measure how aerosol particles form and grow in the atmosphere, they stumbled upon something unexpected: the first-ever airborne measurements of Medium Chain Chlorinated Paraffins (MCCPs), a kind of toxic organic pollutant, in the Western Hemisphere. Their results published today in ACS Environmental Au.
“It's very exciting as a scientist to find something unexpected like this that we weren't looking for,” said Daniel Katz, CU Boulder chemistry PhD student and lead author of the study. “We're starting to learn more about this toxic, organic pollutant that we know is out there, and which we need to understand better.”
Read more at University of Colorado at Boulder
