My research interests are in the area of environmental transport and transformation of organic chemicals, and effects of these phenomena on ecosystem health and climate. They are oriented towards development and verification of predictive models to describe processes in the environment to assess risk. The area of research on which I am currently focusing is the development and application of methods to accurately measure and model fluxes of semivolatile chemicals between the atmosphere and the biosphere. The flux measurements are useful as inputs to models that estimate how fast chemicals enter or exit a compartment of interest. My research group has designed, fabricated, and tested analytical devices and techniques for low-flow (13 L min^-1) and high-flow (300 L min^-1) collection and quantification of concentrations of semivolatile organic chemicals in the atmosphere. We utilize the devices/techniques with micrometeorological techniques including direct covariance and the modified Bowen ratio approach to measure deposition/emission fluxes of the chemicals in the Great Lakes on research vessels including the Michigan Tech R/V Agassiz and the USEPA R/V Lake Guardian.

[Top]

Current Research Projects, Funding Agency

1. Measurement and Modeling of Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxicant Transport in Lake Superior,

Great Lakes Commission, Great Lakes Atmospheric Deposition Program

2. Air: A Conduit between Water, Society and Space, Michigan Research Excellence Fund

Recent Publications

Perlinger, J.A., Tobias, D.E., Zhu, B., and McDonald, C.P., Comparison of micrometeorological measurements of persistent bioaccumulative toxicant air-water exchange fluxes with two-film model estimates, Environ. Sci. Technol., in preparation.

Tobias, D.E., Doskey, P.V., and Perlinger, J.A., Performance of a thermally extractable diffusion denuder for semivolatile organic chemical atmospheric concentration measurement, Environ. Sci. Technol., in preparation.

Rowe, M.D., Tobias, D.E., and Perlinger, J.A., Prediction of collection efficiencies of gaseous and particle-associated semivolatile organic chemicals in multicapillary diffusion denuders, J. Chromatogr. A, in preparation.

Rowe, M.D., Perlinger, J.A., and Urban, N.R., Modeling contaminant behavior in Lake Superior: A comparison of PCBs, PBDEs, and mercury, In State of Lake Superior, Ecovision World Monograph Series, M. Munawar (Ed.), Taylor & Francis Publ., London, UK, in press, 2007.

Tobias, D.E., Morrow, P.S., Doskey, P.V., Perram, D.L., and Perlinger, J.A., Direct thermal desorption of semivolatile organic chemicals from diffusion denuders and gas chromatographic analysis for trace concentration measurement, J. Chromatogr. A, 1140, 1-12, 2007, doi=10.1016/j.chroma.2006.11.045.

Perlinger, J.A., Tobias, D.E., Morrow, P.S., and Doskey, P.V., Evaluation of novel techniques for measurement of air-water exchange of persistent bioaccumulative toxicants in Lake Superior, Environ. Sci. Technol., 39, 8411-8419, 2005; doi=10.1021/es050899q.

Perlinger, J.A., Simcik, M.F., and Swackhamer, D.L., Synthetic organic toxicants in Lake Superior, Special Issue of Aquat. Ecosyst. Health Manage. on Emerging Issues in Lake Superior Research, 7, 491-505, 2004.

[Top]

Updated 6-13-07

J. Perlinger