RSC-USA Fall Meeting Saturday, September 27^th Holiday Inn, 269 North Frontage Road, New London, CT (860-442-0631)

Members of RSC-US enjoy Mystic, CT

The Fall Meeting of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.S. Section) was held at the Holiday Inn, New London/Mystic, CT on Saturday, September 27th, 2008. All members were encouraged to attend an evening that was instructive, entertaining and a chance to meet old and new friends. Several members stayed and enjoyed some of the many attractions of New London, Mystic and the surrounding area.

	RSC USA President and Prof. Spiro D. Alexandratos the speaker at the Fall 2008 meeting

Click to See More Photos from the Fall RSC USA Meeting

(L-R) Klaus Wagner (Immediate Past President), Lesley Davenport (Treasurer), James Badger (President), Les McQuire (Secretary & Webmaster) and Kishore Bagga (Member-at-large)

The Holiday Inn New London/Mystic is nestled in the heart of Mystic Country. The charming and historic Mystic Seaport and Olde Mistick Village are close by and a number of members enjoyed a pleasant afternoon visiting the Seaport.

The program of the RSC U.S. Section’s Fall Meeting provided even more justification to visit the Mystic area. The evening began at 6:00 p.m. with a reception, followed by dinner at 7:00 p.m. After dinner our speaker was Prof. Spiro D. Alexandratos of Hunter College of the City University of New York. He discussed the topic: “The Earth in Crisis: Pollution of Water in the Biosphere – Current Status and Steps Toward Renewal”. The meeting was expected to adjourn around 10 p.m. but members continued to discuss the talk and interact until 11 p.m.

8:15 pm Presentation The Earth in Crisis: Pollution of Water in the Biosphere – Current Status and Steps Toward Renewal – Prof. Spiro D. Alexandratos

Groundwater is an essential resource yet it is being contaminated with metals and molecules that are highly toxic to plant and animal life. Metals (nickel, cobalt, chromium, copper, lead, cadmium, etc.) may be present at a level of 1 part per million – a level that can be toxic. As one of many examples, a site in the state of North Carolina, declared toxic by the US Environmental Protection Agency, is the former location of a battery recycling operation where lead from 95000 cubic meters of contaminated soil has migrated into the aquifer to a depth of 18 meters and now contaminates 320000 cubic meters of groundwater. Compounds that can contaminate groundwater include fuel components, pesticides, and steroids; this is especially serious because some alter the reproductive and endocrine systems of wildlife and humans by acting with estrogen, androgen, and thyroid hormone receptors. Current approaches to the removal of toxic metals from groundwater will be described, including contributions from our laboratory that have led to the development of three polymer-supported reagents: one for the removal of arsenic, one for the removal of radioactive metals, and one for the removal of perchlorate.

About our RSC-US Fall Meeting speaker: Prof. Spiro D. Alexandratos

Spiro Alexandratos is a native New Yorker who received his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley. He then held the position of senior research chemist for four years at the Rohm and Haas Company in Philadelphia before accepting a position at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). At Tennessee, he established close collaborations with scientists at the Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories, and was eventually named a Paul and Wilma Ziegler Professor of Chemistry and the Hoechst-Celanese Professor of Polymer Science. The attraction to New York always remained strong, though, and he accepted the opportunity in 2001 to join the chemistry department at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he continues his research on ion-selective polymer-supported reagents with an outstanding group of post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduates.