Everyone Makes a Mark

One of the biggest challenges of our time is protecting the purity of our water and the lives that depend on it. We haven't been helping much. We've introduced more than 10,000 chemicals into our environment that can end up in our drinking water.

It's not exactly a thirst-quenching thought, but there is hope. Professor Lynda McCarthy is listening to Mother Nature and harnessing her power to protect our drinking water.

Are you familiar with the "canary in a coal mine" concept? Decades ago, canaries alerted miners to harmful gases in their mines. Lynda and her team use the same approach in their research, but use aquatic organisms instead of canaries to sound the alarm. For instance, the organisms are placed at the mouth of a drinking water intake pipe. When contaminants enter the pipe, organisms react negatively and those monitoring the system can shut everything down immediately. Compare that to sending a sample to the lab and waiting for results.

Lynda couldn't do this research alone. Her interdisciplinary team brings a host of experience, including engineering and policy expertise, under one roof. Together, they're developing a comprehensive approach to protecting our drinking water. It's the Ryerson way. We encourage experts from different walks of life to work together to find solutions to the world's big problems.

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