Research by an Indiana University environmental scientist and colleagues at universities in Iowa and Washington finds that potentially harmful growth-promoting hormones used in beef production are expected to persist in the environment at higher concentrations and for longer durations than previously thought.

 

"What we release into the environment is just the starting point for a complex series of chemical reactions that can occur, sometimes with unintended consequences," said Adam Ward, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the IU Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "When compounds react in a way we don't anticipate -- when they convert between species, when they persist after we thought they were gone -- this challenges our regulatory system."

 

Numerical simulations performed in this study can help to predict the potential impact of environmental processes on contaminant fate to more effectively understand the potential for these unexpected effects.

 

This study illustrates potential weaknesses in the U.S. system of regulating hazardous substances, which focuses on individual compounds and often fails to account for complex and sometimes surprising chemical reactions that occur in the environment.

 

 

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