EAR-PF: The optimization of SPC-POU filter and its application of well water treatment within Indigenous lands.

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An NSF EAR Postdoctoral fellowship was awarded to Dr. Ranalda Tsosie to carry out a research, teaching and professional development experience at Montana State University under the mentorship of Dr. Ellen Lauchnor and Dr. Mari Eggers. The PI will engage with three communities to address arsenic contamination issues. Two of these communities are located on Indigenous lands, the Navajo and Crow reservations, and the third community is in a rural community in the state of Montana. The proposed research will focus on the ongoing private well arsenic contamination issues in households in Montana and the contamination issues of unregulated water sources located on the Navajo reservation. Specifically, the proposed use-inspired research will determine the species of arsenic and test cost effective and commercially available arsenic removal filters. A second objective is to optimize the design of a current prototype of silica polyamine composite based point of use filter (SPC-POU) developed by Dr. Tsosie during her dissertation research at the University of Montana. This research will advance the knowledge of arsenic remediation and develop an innovative method of addressing arsenic contamination. Arsenic has been studied extensively and much effort has gone into developing more cost-effective methods of remediation. Despite all these efforts, many households throughout the U.S. continue to face issues with arsenic exceedance in their drinking water. This research aims to tackle these issues by working with these households in Montana that do not have access to a publicly monitored water supply. In addition, on the Navajo reservation there are some households that do not have running water in their homes and must rely on unregulated water sources for their household water needs. It is communities/households like these, that this research will be the most impactful.This project is jointly funded by the Division of Earth Sciences and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.