Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s (IISG) leading-edge initiative to support local medicine collection programs is marking its 10-year anniversary. Over this time, IISG-supported community programs in four Great Lakes states have collected and properly disposed of over 200,000 pounds, or 100 tons, of medicine.

When pharmaceuticals expire or prescriptions change, this can present a challenge—how to properly dispose of these unwanted medicines. Drugs that are flushed or thrown in the trash can end up in nearby waterways. And keeping them around the house can be unsafe for children or pets who might accidentally ingest them.

IISG’s work in addressing medicine disposal issues actually began through the inspiration of Lara Buluç, a 2006 NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholar working closely with IISG specialists Beth Hinchey-Malloy and Susan Boehme. “I was interested in the policy and practical solutions that could improve pharmaceutical disposal methods to reduce the risk of these chemicals entering our wastewater stream,” said Buluç.

A U.S Geological Survey study at the time found traces of painkillers, estrogen, antidepressants, and blood-pressure medicines in water samples from 30 states. Later, in 2010, an IISG-funded study found a similar cocktail of pharmaceuticals in nearshore waters of Lake Michigan.

Buluç spent her summer internship gathering information about the impact of pharmaceuticals and personal care products on the environment as well as public education models to develop a toolkit for communities to set up their own collection programs. Hinchey-Malloy and Boehme worked closely with communities to refine this resource. “Communities came to us with a definite need and we worked collaboratively to fulfill that,” said Boehme.

In 2008, Hinchey-Malloy and Boehme, who were located in the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office, began working with communities to set up collection events for safe disposal of medicines. Over time, as IISG’s Laura Kammin took over this initiative, the focus turned to establishing ongoing, sustainable collection programs, which proved to be more convenient for people’s schedules. Today, 51 IISG-supported programs in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan offer their communities a permanent location to dispose of unwanted medicines.

More communities are on the waiting list, looking to establish collection programs with help from Sarah Zack, IISG pollution prevention specialist, who leads the effort today.

“We provide support and guidance for communities who are interested in setting up a collection program,” said Zack. “We help decipher federal regulations, which can be complicated, and make sure that the community is signed up for a free disposal program. We often buy the collection box and label it, and we can help inform residents about this free service.”

In Pendleton, Indiana, where a collection program will soon get off the ground,  resident Tiffany Warfel, who is organizing this through the Intersect Program with help from Zack, sees the need as both a drug safety issue and an environmental one. “The White River flows right through this county,” she explained. “As a nurse,  I’m aware of drug abuse problems and I’ve also had people ask me what to do with their unwanted medications. In fact, through national collection events this year we collected over 700 pounds of medicine so there is a need here for this program.”

In addition to community medicine collection programs, IISG has addressed the medicine disposal issue through educating and inspiring teachers and students to raise awareness in their communities. Program educators Robin Goettel and Terri Hallesy, working with Paul Ritter, a high school teacher in Pontiac, Illinois, and the founder and leader of the Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program, compiled the Medicine Chest, a compendium of lessons on the impacts of medicines in the environment as well as how to engage in stewardship. Kirsten Hope Walker later updated the publication.

IISG’s education team has brought this resource to teacher workshops and directly to students, working with the University of Illinois, Great Lakes Sea Grant programs, museums and non-profit organizations.

IISG debuts its new medicine collection mascot. Join in the Twitter conversation to name this fish.

Eight years ago, IISG also joined forces with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) to help inform veterinarians and their clients about proper disposal of pharmaceuticals prescribed for pets. Kammin worked closely with AVMA to establish a formal partnership that also included the National Sea Grant Office, to share medicine disposal information through a variety of resources and by interacting one-on-one with veterinarians at conventions and other events.

“The partnership with AVMA gave us an inroad to engage the veterinary community,” said Zack. “I’m still talking to veterinarians who were unaware of this issue, so there is still work to be done in this community. Through this partnership, we are giving vet professionals the tools they need to educate their clients as well as themselves.”

One high-profile outreach effort from the collaboration was a billboard on the CBS JumboTron “Super Screen” in Times Square in New York City that ran through the 2011 busy holiday season and well into 2012. Sea Grant and AVMA raised awareness in tourists and other Times Square visitors about concerns related to flushing medicine. This 15-second spot ran about 18 times every day.

Since IISG began its work in this area 10 years ago, awareness regarding the need for easy and sensible ways to dispose of pharmaceuticals has increased, whether the concern is safety or for the health of the environment. IISG’s website, unwantedmeds.org, has had over a million page views since it went online in 2012. And, IISG initiated a national Sea Grant working group that helped foster medicine disposal programs in coastal states around the country. Focused on this issue and other emerging contaminants, as many as 17 Sea Grant programs participated.

During this time, larger campaigns have also taken hold. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, with guidance from IISG and its toolkit, began their own nationwide National Prescription Drug Take Back days in 2010. Thus far, nearly 11 million pounds of unused medications have been collected over the course of 16 events.

Pharmacies are stepping up, most notably Walgreens. Working with DEA to safely dispose of pharmaceuticals, the retailer has installed more than 1,000 disposal kiosks in their pharmacies across the country. In the spring of 2019, all Walgreens pharmacies will offer free safe disposal options.

Some county and state governments are also initiating action. Most notably, both California and Massachusetts enacted new laws to establish a comprehensive state-wide take-back system for medications funded by pharmaceutical companies.

“I’m proud to lead our efforts on medicine disposal because this program provides a valuable service to both communities and the environment,” said Zack. “It also provides the opportunity to collaborate with committed partners, and I especially appreciate that it was an effort designed and advanced by strong women scientists. I hope this successful Sea Grant initiative is around for at least another 10 years.”

To download the community toolkit and other resources, visit unwantedmeds.org.

Purdue University’s Department of Forestry and Natural Resources (FNR) is now accepting applications for graduate student (PhD or MS) assistantships in aquatic ecology to work with FNR and Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant researchers Paris Collingsworth and Tomas Höök. Applications are due January 7, 2019.

Graduate assistants will be co-advised by Collingsworth and Höök and will participate in research projects exploring dynamics of Great Lakes ecosystems, food webs and fisheries.  Selected individuals will be expected to work collaboratively with scientists from federal laboratories as well as Purdue University.  These projects involve an integration of field studies, laboratory analyses, controlled experiments and quantitative modeling analyses.

Research Topics
Specific research topics include

• Exploring the potential of the larval stage as a recruitment bottleneck for fish in the upper Great Lakes.
• Determining the ecological effects of seasonal hypoxia on food web structure and fish vital rates in central Lake Erie.

Qualifications
Minimum qualifications include

• BS (for MS position) or MS (for PhD position) in Biology, Ecology, Fisheries Science or related field.
• GPA of 3.2 or greater.
• Above average GRE scores.

Salary
Assistantships include 12-month stipend, full tuition coverage and insurance.

Start Date
June 2019.

How to Apply
The positions will remain open until filled. For full consideration, please respond by January 7, 2019 and submit cover letter, CV, GRE scores (unofficial), transcript (unofficial), and names and contact numbers of three references to Paris Collingsworth at pcolling@purdue.edu.

Additional Details
For more information, please contact Paris Collingsworth at pcolling@purdue.edu or (312)886-7449. Purdue University is an affirmative action equal opportunity employer.

Researchers on the R/V Lake Guardian collect samples to study sediment from the lake bottom. (Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant photo/Allison Neubauer)

Every five years, Lake Michigan is the focus of intense research and monitoring when scientists come together to answer critical questions and fill information gaps. A report summarizing the results of the 2015 data collection on the lake is now available.

Each year since 2002, through the Cooperative Science Monitoring Initiative (CSMI), multiple federal, state, and university scientists gather on one of the Great Lakes to take part in coordinated research. CSMI is a binational program organized through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“CSMI provides an ideal opportunity for scientists to work collaboratively to tackle complex questions in the Great Lakes,” said David “Bo” Bunnell, a researcher with U.S. Geological Survey. “For example, to understand whether changes in plankton are affecting larval fish, given the size of Lake Michigan and the frequency of sampling required, collaboration among agencies offers the best opportunity to enhance our knowledge and inform managers.”

In recent years, Paris Collingsworth, Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Great Lakes ecosystem specialist and Purdue University researcher, has provided leadership in collaboration with EPA scientists, defining critical questions and coordinating research efforts of various agencies for large-scale studies. He works with the lake partnerships for each lake as they define research priorities, and with scientists as they set up studies and analyze data. He is also helping coordinate Great Lakes Sea Grant programs to develop CSMI outreach products to share research results.

The 2015 Lake Michigan field-year priorities included learning more about the nearshore conditions and the movement of nutrients and organisms offshore, the effect of nutrient loading on water quality, the health and status of the lake’s lower food web, and the movement of contaminants through the food web.

Quagga mussels featured prominently in the key findings of the compiled research results. The researchers found that in mid-depth regions of the lake, where most of these invasive mussels are, their numbers have declined, but their biomass has increased—the mussels are getting bigger. Meanwhile, in deeper parts of the lake, quagga mussel populations continue to expand.

“As quagga mussels filter water, they remove nutrients, bacteria and phytoplankton from the lake, which means that resources at the base of the food web that would have been available under pre-invasion conditions are now bound up in the quagga mussel,” said Collingsworth. “Quantifying the effects of these mussels on energy flow throughout the lake is an important concern for the management community of Lake Michigan.”

In the open waters of the lake, studies revealed that larval fish are growing about half as fast as they did before quagga mussels were established in the early 2000s. In fact, fish data suggest that nearshore areas, and potentially the entire Lake Michigan ecosystem, may not have a sustainable food supply.

The news is better from studies on contaminant levels. The results suggest that efforts to reduce contaminants in Lake Michigan are meeting or exceeding their goals. For example, scientists looked at concentrations of atrazine, a herbicide commonly used in agriculture, and PCBs, a group of industrial chemical banned since 1979, but still present in the lake. In monitored locations, they both are declining faster than predicted.

The CSMI monitoring on Lake Michigan also provided an opportunity to use advances in technology to answer complicated questions. For many decades, devices known as Ponar dredges have been lowered to the lake bottom at a series of single points to capture and bring up bottom-dwelling animals. In 2015, this work was supplemented with a camera attached to a benthic sled that recorded video of the lake bottom.

“The traditional method is still necessary to examine individual animals to learn how they are growing, or the makeup of their DNA,” said Carolyn Foley, IISG research coordinator. “However, the sled sampling gives a much broader picture of exactly where animals are, and in what numbers. Using both sampling techniques can help scientists get a much better picture of exactly what is happening 60 to 900 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan.”

As the CSMI cycle continues, planning has begun for the 2020 Lake Michigan field season. To begin this process, in October, about 60 Lake Michigan federal, state, university and tribal scientists as well as managers met in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to reflect on past research outcomes, explore scientific gaps, and suggest future research areas. The workshop was facilitated by IISG and sponsored by the International Joint Commission.

You can find the CSMI 2015 Lake Michigan Report, including the executive summary and the compendium of research project results, on the IISG website. IISG specialists are also creating an Esri Story Map, which will use an interactive approach to describe the research results.

Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant (IISG) is excited to announce the funding of five new Discovery Projects. These small, one-year projects help researchers achieve bigger and better things, such as larger grants to study critical questions, providing proof of concepts that can be scaled up to support labs or businesses, or generating tools to help communities make the best use of available information. The five projects IISG began funding in 2018 address aquaculture, aquatic invasive species and pollution.

“These five new research projects are asking questions that are highly relevant to aquatic systems in Illinois, Indiana, Lake Michigan and the broader Great Lakes region,” said IISG Director Tomas Höök. “We have great hopes that these Discovery Projects will indeed springboard their principal investigators to other opportunities and outcomes.”

Aquaculture
Karolina Kwasek of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale will explore whether invasive Asian carp could be used to feed very young largemouth bass raised in aquaculture facilities. Largemouth bass are a popular species across the country, but their high protein requirements make them tricky to rear. Kwasek hopes this novel use of Asian carp may support aquaculture growers who wish to raise largemouth bass.

Invasive Species
Eric Larson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will use a relatively new concept, that of an avatar species, to predict where a new invasive species might establish. He will use the red swamp crayfish, which is already found in the Great Lakes basin, as an avatar to predict where another potential invader, Chelax destructor, might successfully establish. If successful, this method could potentially be applied to other potential invaders, including fish, aquatic plants, and other macroinvertebrates.

Pollution
Jen Fisher of Indiana University Northwest will investigate whether pollution from failing septic systems might be affecting microbial communities on beach sand, ultimately posing a risk to human health. Her work will be focused in northeast Indiana.

An Li of the University of Illinois at Chicago will assess presence of microplastics in Lake Michigan sediments using samples that have been previously collected and analyzed for other contaminants. Through this work, she hopes to generate protocols that can be applied to sediments in any aquatic system.

John Scott of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center will examine whether microplastics help introduce per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to the lower levels of aquatic food webs. His timely work has the potential to affect fish consumption advisories, if it seems likely that PFAS can be transferred up the food web.

If you are a graduate student interested in combining your education and experience with policy, marine sciences or coastal community resiliency, consider applying for one, or even two, of these fellowships. The opportunities below are open to graduate students enrolled in a master’s or doctorate program. For more information, please visit our Fellowships page or contact Angela Archer at amcbride@purdue.edu or (765)496-3722.

John A. Knauss Fellowship

The Knauss fellowship provides a unique educational experience to students who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and in the national policy decisions affecting those resources. The program matches highly qualified graduate students with “hosts” in the legislative and executive branches of government located in the Washington, D.C. area for a one year paid fellowship.

• Application deadline: February 22, 2019, 5pm local time
• Start date: February 1, 2020
• Length: One year
• More info: http://seagrant.noaa.gov/Knauss

NOAA Coastal Management Fellowship

The Coastal Management Fellowship was established to provide on-the-job education and training opportunities in coastal resource management and policy for postgraduate students and to provide project assistance to state coastal zone management programs. The program matches postgraduate students with state coastal zone programs to work on projects proposed by the state.

• Application deadline: January 18, 2019
• Start date: August 1, 2019
• Length: Two years
• More info: http://coast.noaa.gov/fellowship/

National Marine Fisheries Service Fellowships

These fellowships are aimed at Ph.D. candidates, who are United States citizens, interested in the population dynamics of living marine resources and the development and implementation of quantitative methods for assessing their status. The marine resource economics fellowship concentrates on the conservation and management of marine resources.

• Application deadline: January 30, 2019
• Length: Up to two years for Marine Economics and up to three years for Population Dynamics
• More info: http://seagrant.noaa.gov/NMFS-SG-Fellowship

Deadline: January 29, 2019

The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program will be reviewed Feb. 5-7, 2019, by a team convened by the National Sea Grant College Program. The review will be conducted at the Illini Center in Chicago, Illinois, and will consider all aspects of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant’s programs, including management and organization, performance, research, stakeholder engagement and collaborative activities, including those with various offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This notice invites you to participate in our review by emailing your comments about Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant to oar.sg-feedback@noaa.gov.

Kindly send your comments at your earliest convenience and note that the comment period will end on Jan. 29, 2019, one week before the site review visit.

Please include “Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant site review” in the subject line.

Thank you for assisting us by letting the review team hear from you.

Sincerely,

Tomas Höök
Director
Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant
thook@purdue.edu

The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program (IISG) Faculty Scholars Program is a professional networking and development opportunity to support faculty from institutes of higher learning in Illinois and Indiana who wish to develop extension, education or communication capacities related to their scholarly interests. Applicants can request up to $12,000 to support activities that further the IISG mission to empower southern Lake Michigan communities to secure a healthy environment and economy.

The Sea Grant Scholars Program consists of a program introduction phase and a proposal development phase. Specific deliverables include a preliminary product, such as a literature review or needs assessment, and a fully developed proposal to submit to an external funding agency. Funding to support scholar activities will last one year starting May 1, 2019. Scholars will be expected to participate in networking activities with IISG staff and stakeholders throughout their tenure.

Application
View the full request for applications. Applications should be emailed to iisgres@purdue.edu by 6:00 p.m. EST on February 22, 2019​.

Questions
If you have questions about the Faculty Scholars Program, please contact IISG Research Coordinator Carolyn Foley (cfoley@purdue.edu).

We encourage faculty members from all disciplines to apply. IISG is committed to supporting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. View the full IISG values statement.​

Caitie Nigrelli (right) and other scientists use nets to retrieve sediment and invertebrate samples from near the banks of the Grand Calumet River (Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Photo/Hope Charters)

Caitie Nigrelli, an environmental social scientist working for IISG and the U.S. EPA, has been featured in a Christian Science Monitor article about her involvement in the cleanup of the Grand Calumet River in Northwest Indiana.

The reason behind the article? “Industry and environmental interests are often opposed. But in Indiana, a river cleanup requiring both sides to negotiate with each other offers an example for conservation partnerships everywhere.”

Full URL – “In an Indiana river cleanup, businesses and environmentalists cooperate” by Lauren Little: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Progress-Watch/2018/1029/In-an-Indiana-river-cleanup-businesses-and-environmentalists-cooperate

The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center has released information about additional IISG funding for researcher John Scott to expand a microplastics research project to include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.

Excerpt: “With new funding from Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) researcher John Scott and his team will be able to expand their research to include more environmental contaminants. With their current project on persistent organic pollutants in Lake Muskegon, they are studying the effects of microplastic type and deployment time in the sediments and the water column on sorption of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to the microplastic particles.”

Full URL – “Persistent Organic Pollutants on Microplastics Project expanded to include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances” by Elizabeth Meschewski”: https://blog.istc.illinois.edu/2018/11/12/persistent-organic-pollutants-on-microplastics-project-expanded-to-include-per-and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances/

Sara McMillan monitors nutrients in two-stage ditches along farmland near Purdue University. These floodplains grow rich with plant life. (Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant Photo/Irene Miles)

Waterways along Midwestern farmlands are typically managed to move stormwater away from crop fields quickly, but this efficient process can wash nutrients and sediment into lakes and rivers, nearby and downstream. Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant researchers have found that a change in waterway management practices can lead to a win-win—water is still quickly drained from crops with two-stage ditches, but because they have more floodplain area, stormwater slows down so more nitrogen is retained along the way.

Sara McMillan at Purdue University and Jennifer Tank at University of Notre Dame are monitoring nitrogen and phosphorus loads coming from two-stage ditches in farmland waterways to document how effective restored floodplains are at holding nutrients in place. “By restoring mini-floodplains on each side of these formerly channelized ditches, you add the potential for enhanced biology and hydrology to cleanse the water through nutrient and sediment removal,” said Tank, whose primary work is in ecology and environmental biology.

“Floodplains provide a way for water to spread out and slow down—allowing sediment to accumulate and plants and soil microbes to thrive. When plants thrive, this allows organic matter in the soil to increase,” said McMillan. In this environment, microbes use nitrogen for energy, removing it from the water as they transform it into a gas—a process called denitrification.

(Graphic courtesy of Brittany Hanrahan)

Brittany Hanrahan, whose doctoral research at Notre Dame was a part of this study, compared the effectiveness of reducing nitrogen in two-stage ditches with waterways in which traditional channelization management has stopped for at least a decade. Over time, these channels in northern Indiana developed mini-floodplains and began to look like more natural streams. The two-stage ditches in the study were about 10 years old.

Hanrahan, who now has a postdoctoral position with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, found that denitrification was 30 percent higher along two-stage floodplains compared to the naturalized ones. The two-stage ditches have more floodplain area than the naturalized channels and are designed to flood more often, which allows denitrification to happen more frequently.

“We calculated that it would take nearly 30 years for the floodplain in the naturalized ditch to accumulate the surface area of floodplain that is constructed in just one day in the two-stage ditch,” said Hanrahan. “Jump-starting the biology with two-stage construction really helps to remove more nitrogen even immediately after construction.”

While slowing down floodwater is conducive to denitrification, phosphorus goes through a different biological process. In fact, if floodwater stands long enough, phosphorus may be released from particles in the soil and water. On the other hand, creating space for water to spread out and slow down can enhance the settling of sediment particles with phosphorus attached.

The design of the two-stage ditch, including the height and width of the floodplain, can make a difference in terms of flooding frequency and duration. One general practice, according to McMillan, is to triple the width of the channel—if it is a 10-foot wide channel, 10 feet are added on either side so it is 30 feet wide.

“We’re pretty confident from previous research that it takes a long time for phosphorus to be released, so it’s not likely that we’re causing a net release of phosphorus that is stored in soils,” said McMillan, who is in Purdue’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering. “While we think that these ditches pose a net benefit for both phosphorus and nitrogen, phosphorus is indeed more complicated.”

Most two-stage ditches can be found in Indiana, which may be because the USDA Environmental Quality Incentives Program covers the majority of the cost of installing them in the state. It’s a one-time construction cost, whereas dredging to maintain trapezoidal channels needs to happen every few years, depending on the system. “With a two-stage ditch, the velocities in the main channel, which is the original channel, are fast enough during high flows that it is always self-cleaning,” said Tank. “You never have to dredge again.”