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Honey As A Biomonitor For Air Pollutant Deposition In The Eastern United States Using Ion Chromatography And Scanning Electron Microscopy, Cole Cochran

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Anthropogenic activities generate metal, acid, and particulate air pollutants which negatively impact human and ecological health. In the United States, power plant, industrial, and vehicle emissions are leading causes of air pollution, however, the measurement of air pollution at high-resolution spatial regimes remains a challenge. Honey has emerged as a powerful biomonitoring tool to effectively quantify contaminants without the need for a large array of monitoring instruments. I hypothesized that honey could be used to effectively measure and map modern air pollutant spatiotemporal relationships over the Eastern U.S. Using ion chromatography with sulfate as an indicator for air pollution and …