Cutbacks of personnel at our local “water lab,” as Duluth’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Duluth laboratory is commonly called, would be a massive mistake.
The personnel at the lab have studied and produced ways to predict the effects of chemicals on our environment, including wildlife and water quality, to ultimately protect human health. Their results over the past 50-plus years have benefited all of us. Examples include identifying the hazards and risks of asbestos in Lake Superior, understanding the drastic effects of DDT, PCBs, PFAS, dioxin, metals, and hundreds of foreign and naturally occurring chemicals that have been identified as carcinogenic or toxic to humans and wildlife.
The lab is also at the forefront of developing methods to restore damaged areas such as in the Duluth-Superior Harbor, St. Louis River, and throughout the United States.
I am a retired professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth who worked with these superb scientists for over 30 years. They are individuals with high integrity and years of training and experience. They are your neighbors. They are working hard for all of us to solve perplexing environmental problems.
Among their primary goals is understanding and predicting what will happen before chemicals are used in the environment. This is not only to keep us safe but is very cost-effective, because it avoids the cost of cleaning up or restoration later.
The U.S. EPA lab has been an economic driver in Duluth. The presence of the lab has generated millions of dollars in additional research activity at the University of Minnesota and University of Wisconsin systems, including in Duluth and Superior. This research has not only solved many problems in water quality and human health, it has supported numerous research positions and graduate students at these universities for over 50 years.
New chemicals are constantly being introduced with little knowledge of how they will affect the environment or our health. The vast experience of the personnel at the EPA lab is essential to completing the research necessary to help society find the most efficient, economic, and effective solutions to our environmental problems.
I urge you to contact your representatives and show your support for the Duluth U.S. EPA laboratory. The lab was established here in Duluth for a solid reason: its proximity to the available fresh water of Lake Superior. This clean water is essential for conducting toxicological experiments and connecting those experiments to real-world problems.
The Duluth lab, now called the Great Lakes Toxicology and Ecology Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was established in 1970. It is a precious part of our Duluth history.
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Gerald Niemi of Duluth was previously director of the Center for Water and the Environment at the Natural Resources Research Institute and a retired emeritus professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
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