Storytellers of STEMM

#110 - Jeremy Conkle: Pollution in Wetlands and Waterways

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Today's storyteller is Dr Jeremy Conkle! He's a professor at Texas A&M Corpus Christi, and his specialty is pollution in wetlands, including pharmaceuticals and microplastics. I met Jeremy way back in the day when we were both students at LSU, and today we talk about his journey to his current job and research focus! Jeremy has always done really interesting research, starting with looking at pharmaceuticals in wetlands. I love wetlands as y'all all know but this is an aspect I would never have thought about probably without knowing Jeremy. It's really interesting learning how long things persist in the environment and I learned we're still finding the remnants of DDT out there. We have a brief chat about the DDT aspect, but if you want to learn more I definitely recommend reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson - it was the book that introduced me to what being an ecologist can achieve. This conversation is pretty wide ranging covering a lot of different aspects of wetland ecology, pollution, the impacts of oil and gas, climate change, and how all of these things interact. I am so glad Jeremy agreed to do the podcast, and I really enjoy it when close friends agree to be on this podcast with me, it was so great to catch up, and I hope y'all enjoy this episode!!

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You can find Rachel Villani on Twitter @flyingcypress and Storytellers of STEMM on Facebook and on the shiny new Twitter account @storytellers42.

You can find Jeremy Conkle on Twitter @C_HaWQ and his lab's website: https://www.c-hawq.org/.

  • "Davis Pond" we refer to is the Davis Pond Freshwater Diversion in Louisiana: https://coastal.la.gov/diversion-operations/
  • CRMS is the Coastwide Reference Monitoring System
  • Nurdle in the Rough - jewelry handmade from recovered ocean plastics!
  • Cancer Alley in Louisiana - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
  • Wiki about the Formosa pollution and waste violations
  • The Netflix documentary Dirty Money had an episode featuring Formosa and this pollution battle: Season 2 Episode 6 called "Point Comfort"
  • Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan: https://coastal.la.gov/our-plan/
  • Jeremy and I briefly talk about "superfund sites" and if you don't know what that is, check out: https://www.epa.gov/superfund
  • Kemp's Ridley video from Texas I was talking about, but is actually from 1947: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4u3GL9SyyM

    • Book List: An Unreasonable Woman by Diane Wilson, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, This is Our Time By Ruby Bridges

    Episodes Referenced: Lauren Land Morris (Ep 6), Sarah Youngren (Ep 7), Alex Troutman (Ep 59)

    Recorded on 26 January 2021. 


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    Storytellers of STEMMBy Rachel Villani
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