Meet Prof. James Longstaffe Descriptive Transcript

Summary: Prof. James Longstaffe describes what he does and the tools he uses as an environmental chemist to study the molecular environment and contaminants in soil.

00:00 - 00:04 
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Text: :60 Second Snapshots
Meet the Profs of the Ontario Agricultural College

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James: I’m environment chemist and I enjoy finding new things that we didn't  or couldn't know before about our molecular environment. I work with a tool called nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR for short and  this tool allows us to study molecules in their natural environment and soil and groundwater in a way that other methods don't really allow for and using these approaches, we're able to learn new things and to develop new solutions for contemporary environmental problems like contaminated groundwater or contaminated soils or persistent  organic pollutants.

00:40 - 01:16

James: Most contaminants in the environment will degrade fairly rapidly. Either microbes will eat them or light will break them down, but when a lot  of compounds become absorbed into soils, they tend to stick around in an environment for much longer. Often on the scale of decades. This can be good and bad from an environmental standpoint, but the reality is 
we don't really fully understand why this phenomenon happens. With our NMR tools we were able to actually see what molecules did when they were absorbed  into soils, and this includes learning where they become[music fades in] stuck in the soil and 
how they are stuck there.

01:16 - 01:21
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Text: www.uoguelph.ca/oac
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