UAF freshman business and pre-dental major Jeff Bue’s family is careful not to drink water from the household well. However, Bue wondered if arsenic, so common in interior Alaska wells, makes its way to the family dinner plate via the garden. (Bue is pictured at right).
Bue’s experiment, which proved that the arsenic does indeed transfer to heads of lettuce in substantial amounts, took first place in the undergraduate research symposium held at UAF April 9. The symposium was part of Campus Research Day, a day of events celebrating research at UAF. For his first place award Bue won $2,500 on his UAF account. His mentor is Professor Meriam Karlsson. Born in Anchorage, Bue grew up in Nome and Fairbanks. He has been very active in the Country Meadows 4-H Club and has shown pigs, calves, goats, and lambs in the Tanana Valley State Fair. He has participated in the biathlon events in the Arctic Winter Games.
Bue's report was:
Arsenic contamination of drinking water has become a world-wide concern. It is of especially high concern to residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, where there is a high probability of excessive arsenic concentrations in groundwater. In this project we demonstrated the ability of lettuce to absorb arsenic from water. Two groups of lettuce were grown in greenhouse conditions. The control group was irrigated with water uncontaminated with arsenic. The treatment group was irrigated with water spiked with arsenic to a level of 1 ppm. The samples were digested using a microwave digester and analyzed using an ICP-OES. Development of methods and procedures for the determination of arsenic concentration in vegetables was the main purpose of this project. We found that the arsenic concentration in the lettuce grown in arsenic contaminated water was 1.125 ppm with a standard deviation of 0.127 ppm, compared to a concentration of 0.024 ppm with a standard deviation of 0.008 in the control group. We concluded that lettuce has the ability to absorb arsenic and that more research should be done to determine the arsenic absorption abilities of other garden vegetables, as well as the relation between the arsenic concentration in irrigation water and arsenic concentration in vegetables.
Professor Karlsson said, "Jeff worked hard on this project and all credit for making it a success goes to him. He spent many hours in the lab and gave up large portions of his Christmas and spring breaks to complete the study."
Bue is still interested in the project and will do more analyses including a study of zucchini. There are reports zucchini is especially efficient in absorbing and building up high levels of arsenic if irrigated with contaminated water.
"Jeff’s findings have generated a lot of interest and we plan on publishing the results in a peer-review journal article," Dr. Karlsson said. "Considering the large involvement of undergraduate students in high caliber research projects at UAF, it is an impressive achievement for Jeff to take first place."
(Photo by Jeff Werner)
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