Recipient Organization
TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
LUBBOCK,TX 79409
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The Osage Nation is a federally recognized sovereign Tribal nation working to build a sustainable, sovereign food supply for their people. A new kind of environmental contaminant called "forever chemicals" fundamentally undermines the sovereignty of the Osage Nation's food production systems by threatening the health and wellbeing of the Osage citizens. Forever chemicals, otherwise known as PFAS or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, may persist up to a thousand years, enter the human food-web, and cause damage to the human reproductive system and other undiscovered illnesses. Despite the urgency of the situation, little is known about how PFAS contaminates the food-web. We hypothesize that understanding the pathway of PFAS transmission during different modes of agricultural production will help to devise a hazard monitoring, prediction, and prevention system. To test this hypothesis, researchers at Texas Tech University will work alongside Osage Nation scientists to establish a sophisticated PFAS analytical facility at the Osage Nation Harvest Land facility, employ and train full-time Tribal employees to collect and process agricultural samples, as well as educate the Osage citizens and agricultural workforce to use the PFAS decision making tool. Graduate students from Texas Tech University will conduct integrated research at the Osage Nation and will be instrumental in collecting environmental, plant and animal tissue samples, quantifying different PFASs, and identifying the critical nodes of contamination via water, soil, agricultural inputs, cultural practices (e.g., fire suppressants used in controlled burning) and other external sources (e.g., fire stations, open oil wells, etc.). Stakeholder input (i.e., the Osage citizens) will be collected throughout the project's lifecycle, such that the research techniques and outcomes can be sustained long after the work is completed in support of Osage Nation food and nutrition security initiatives. The outcomes of this project will have broader impacts outside of the Osage Nation when used to eliminate the threat of PFAS from various food production systems.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
20%
Developmental
60%
Goals / Objectives
PFAS contamination and the possible subsequent bioaccumulation fundamentally undermines the sustainability and sovereignty of the Osage Nation's food production systems by threatening the health and wellbeing of the Osage citizens. Hence, the long-term goal of this project is to safeguard the Osage Nation's nutritional security and sovereignty by removing/controlling the threat of PFAS exposure from their agricultural practices. Our goal will be achieved by realizing the following objectives:Obj. 1. Identifying and sampling potential pathways of PFAS mobility in the Osage Nation food-websTask 1.1: Scope and inventory analysis of the Osage Nation's whole food-webTask 1.2: Establishing environmental, plant and animal tissue sampling protocolsObj. 2. Characterizing PFAS bioaccumulation in Osage Nation's plant and animal productsTask 2.1: Establishing workflow for sample preparation and PFAS analysesTask 2.2: Determine the pathways of PFAS sorption and translocation in soil-water-plant interfacesTask 2.3: Determine pathways for PFAS biomagnification in plant-animal interfacesObj. 3. Developing a decision-making tool to assess and control the risk of PFAS exposure in Osage Nation's food production systems.Task 3.1: Conduct a Life Cycle Impact assessmentTask 3.2: Make management decisions needed to minimize PFAS bioaccumulationObj. 4. Train and educate Osage citizens in comprehensive environmental contaminant analyses and control.Task 4.1: Organize workshops and learning modules to identify and control environmental contaminantsTask 4.2: Synergistically develop quality control and information dissemination protocols
Project Methods
Evaluation of extension activities, specifically the implementation on use of the LCIA tool and the perceptions of improved PFAS understandings within the community, will be carried out through surveys. These surveys will be conducted annually with Osage Nation members and will include question about their levels of understanding for the chemical behavior of PFAS in food production systems.Quality assurance: PD Kelly and Co-PD Hayman will oversee quality assurance of the proposed activities. Dr. Kelly will establish the guidelines and procedures for sample collection and characterization, whereas Dr. Hayman will ensure adherence to sampling methods, sample storage, processing, and PFAS characterization by the graduate students and lab technician at the Osage Nation Harvest Land facility. Dr. Kelly has extensive experience serving as PD for a wide array of federal, state, and regionally funded projects and has mentored many on- and off-campus graduate students to successful completion of their graduate degrees, including a student working at the Osage Nation.Dr. Hayman will assume the role of the immediate supervisor, primary contact, and sampling coordinator for the lab technician and graduate students when conducting research within the Osage Nation's boundaries and in the absence of the TTU PD and Co-PDs. Dr. Hayman will have the authority to directly communicate and engage with the Osage Nation's administrative officials to ensure the fulfillment of the research objectives.Scheduled corrective actions: Measures will be taken to reduce instrumental contamination, including rinsing of lab equipment with methanol prior to usage, solvent clean-up, and insertion of a PFC isolator column obtained from Waters prior to the injector to trap and delay contamination originating from the UPLC instrument and solvents. Instrumental solvent blanks will be checked every 10 injections for potential carryover effects.Peer review of analytical methods: A PFAS expert from Waters will independently evaluate the methods developed in this project for the determination of emerging ultra-short chained and PFAS precursor compounds.Use of secondary data (for LCA): Secondary data from the food systems will be collected based on the life cycle of food products and the functional unit chosen. We will ensure the quality of secondary data by assuring the primary LCA data measured from the systems are accurate and representative of the systems, while analyzing the quality of environmental data pulled from LCA databases in tandem. Dr. Kelly will provide access to Simapro software.Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCA) models: The project's goal is to develop accurate LCA models that provide a framework for understanding PFAS contamination levels detected within the system. This will provide a consistent framework to include PFAS contamination data in decision making tools, such as agricultural production, habitat management, and Tribal food sovereignty systems. The LCA models can be further developed to minimize PFAS exposure in Osage food production systems as they expand food sovereignty systems. Experimental data, namely PFAS concentration, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification factors, will be used to assess the risk of exposure.