The Triangle

Issue date: 1/26/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Pete Croteau

Media Credit: Pete Croteau The United States Environmental Protection Agency gave $5 million to 10 research facilities to investigate and improve specific areas of the water purification process.

On Jan. 17, the United States Environmental Protection Agency awarded a $566,714 grant to chemical and biological engineering professor Raj Mutharasan to develop a better method for detecting harmful life forms in public drinking water systems. The grant is part of the EPA's Science to Achieve Results research program.

The goal of the grant is to find a faster, more accurate test for detecting drinking water pathogens at drinking water facilities. If the pathogen is detected at an earlier time, the public is warned sooner and fewer illnesses occur.

Mutharasan's laboratory will develop sensors that detect pathogen agents such as cryptosporidium and giardia in drinking water without a concentration or filtration step in the process, shortening test time.

The research team hopes to first develop a working filter to test one liter of water, and then scale up the design so the sensor can be integrated into a regular drinking water facility. The DNA signatures of the pathogens will be used to identify them.

Mutharasan's team hopes to improve the sensitivity of the detection system to one picogram; it is currently in the 10-100 picogram range. This will be done using the new oscillating modality technique, which is a one-step process and does not rely on filtration.

The EPA selected Mutharasan's laboratory out of many other applicants. He has hired graduate students to help him carry out his research, but he is the principal investigator of the project and the only faculty involved. He wrote and designed the grant.

The project formally started on Sept. 15, 2006, and will continue for the next three years.

"The project is still at an early age," said Professor Mutharasan, "However, we have already shown feasibility of detecting cryptosporidium with the sensors my lab develops."

This project is part of a larger EPA drinking water study. A total of ten research facilities are involved, and a total of five million dollars has already been allocated by the EPA. The research laboratories are located at Tufts University, University of Arizona, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, University of Washington, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, University of California Riverside, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Michigan State University, which received two grants for two different projects. Each facility is responsible for investigating and improving a specific subdivision of the drinking water purification process.

Recently, Mutharasan received another grant, this time from the United States Department of Agriculture, to examine pathogens in foods. This project came after the E. coli outbreak from spinach sold in grocery stores.

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