University of Illinois atmospheric scientist Donald Wuebbles relies on NCSA resources and expertise as he looks at the health of our planet, from the spread of potential toxins to global climate shifts.

It's been found in salmon, polar bears, and dolphins. It's been found in the Great Lakes, the Arctic, and the Mediterranean. It's been found in apples, green beans, bread, and ground beef. And it's been found in the bloodstreams of people worldwide.

Simplified mechanism for the atmospheric degradation of 8:2 FTOH (blue box) illustrating its conversion into C8F17CHO (green box) and the competition between NO and either HO2 or CH3O2 radicals, which limits the formation of perfluorocarboxylic acids (red box).

It's perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a persistent, bioaccumulative compound that has come under scrutiny from the Environmental Protection Agency because of its as yet unknown potential for toxicity in human beings. The EPA issued a preliminary risk assessment regarding PFOA in 2003, but there are still more questions than answers about the chemical's effects on human beings and how it has come to be so pervasive in the global environment.

In an attempt to answer some of those questions, University of Illinois atmospheric scientist Donald Wuebbles uses computing resources at NCSA to investigate the chain of events that leads to the presence of potentially toxic PFOA in the environment.

“Here's this substance that's found in nature,” Wuebbles says, “So the science question arises, ‘Where is this stuff coming from?’”

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