Experts in the News

A BioLab manufacturing facility in Conyers is continuing to release chlorine, chloramines and chlorine compounds in an incident that originated from a small rooftop fire in the early morning of September 29. The fire activated a sprinkler system and doused water-reactive trichloroisocyanuric acid (TCCA) inside the building. This initiated a chemical decomposition reaction that released chlorine gas into the atmosphere. 

Love Family Professor Sally Ng in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences confirms the morning after the fire, the number of chlorine-containing particles detected in the air at the Ascent's Decatur site, around 28km from the BioLab plant, had increased by about 1400 times. Bromine-containing particles in the air increases by about 170 times, she says. 

The freshly formed Tropical Storm Leslie is heading in the direction of the East Coast as it intensifies, current National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts predict. Low wind shear, as well as sea surface temperatures and atmospheric moisture, are key factors that affect whether a storm will intensify into a hurricane, and how strong that hurricane might get. Senior Academic Professional Zachary Handlos in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences says "tropical cyclones primarily thrive from the following atmospheric ingredients: warm sea surface temperatures and a sufficiently deep layer of warm water, all serving as a key source of energy for a tropical cyclone as well as weak middle and upper level atmospheric winds." 

Hurricane Helene’s destructive and deadly rampage through multiple Southeastern states after coming ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast exemplifies the potential expanding impact of extreme tropical weather. Assistant Professor Ali Sarhadi in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences says “this tragedy highlights the increasing vulnerability of inland regions to the impacts of hurricanes. As climate change intensifies storm behavior, including increased rainfall and slower storm movement, areas previously considered less susceptible are now facing heightened risks.” 

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency says, at this time, chlorine levels in the air sit at safe levels after the Conyers chemical plant fire. A reporter from 11 Alive news interviews Associate Professor Joseph Sadighi in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry about whether the chemicals can impact groundwater. He says, while the chemicals can seep into the groundwater, "my best bet would be if you weren't choking and rubbing your eyes from the chlorine in the air, your water is probably ok."

A fire at a chemical plant in Rockdale County sent a colossal plume of smoke into the sky. Chemicals released from the fire at the BioLab in Conyers include chlorine, chloramine and chlorine compounds, according to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency. Additionally, bromine — another chemical used in spa and pool treatments as an alternative to chlorine and has a bleach-like odor — was also detected, though at lower levels.

Love Family Professor Nga Lee (Sally) in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences says "a system known as the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry Measurement Network detected a 1,400-times increase in the amount of chlorine-containing particles in the air, and a 170-times increase in the amount of bromine-containing particles in the air over Decatur on Monday morning. Typically, there is little of either element in the air." 

Scientists in Atlanta are monitoring the BioLab fire situation and the impact on the air that we breathe. Reporter Liza Lucas with 11 Alive news interviews Love Family Professor Sally Ng with the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences for insight into what is in the air. "When the fire occurred, part of the pollutant was brought outside by the wind," says Ng. Her team documented an "unusually high spike in chlorine and bromine containing particles," but says "the spike still falls within EPA safety standards." Ng's team continues to monitor the situation. 

When deciding on what music to improve productivity at work, you may want to consider two important variables: predictability and novelty. Associate Professor Thackery Brown in the School of Psychology has been working with Yiren Ren, a sixth-year PhD student, on examining how music affected a subject’s ability to process or remember new information. “Music is just such an emotional medium,” says Ren. “It can not only modulate how you feel at that moment, it can also modulate the memory you’re recalling at that moment and how you perceive that memory itself.”

A chemical cloud has been emanating from Conyers since Sunday, when a fire broke out at the facility of a company that makes pool and spa treatments and sprinkler system water reacted with chemicals on site. The chemical plume put residents in Rockdale County into a shelter-in-place order. Associate Professor Joseph Sadighi in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry explained in a Q&A with 11Alive meteorologist Melissa Nord what is lingering in the air over the Conyers BioLab plant. He began with explaining the difference between chlorine and chlorine compounds. 

"Chlorine is an element that is very common in everyday life," says Sadighi. "Table salt is sodium chloride, which means it's chlorine that has picked up an electron and it's in a salt lattice that makes it very, very stable. If you run an electrical current through it, you can turn it into chlorine gas, that's a molecule made up of two chlorine atoms, and it is a gas under ordinary conditions. If we have it in a cylinder under pressure, at about eight atmospheres and room temperature, you have a liquid under the pressure of its own headspace like we do in propane gas cylinders for our grills."

Tropical Storm Isaac developed over the ocean, becoming the ninth named storm of the hurricane season. The storm formed rapidly from a tropical disturbance.

"A tropical disturbance is called a tropical depression whenever the winds are between 25 and 38 mph," says Annalisa Bracco, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "When the wind speeds are between 39 and 73 mph it is classified as a tropical storm. Above 74 mph it is called a hurricane or typhoon." 

Hurricane Helene formed from an area of low pressure in the Caribbean and strengthened rapidly over a few days.

"Two main conditions behind intensification are warm surface waters (the cyclone can extract energy from it and the warmer the water, the more energy it can extract to grow), and low wind shear (high wind shear tends to disrupt vortices, both cyclones and anticyclones)," says Bracco. 

One group of birds is relatively scarce in the lowlands of South Asia: insect eaters. A study published in Ecology Letters may explain why. Weaver ants—forest-dwelling ants that live in the lowlands and ferociously prey on small invertebrates—might be gobbling up the birds’ food source and pushing them to higher elevations.

“That’s a big-time idea, that it’s ants that shape insect-eating bird communities,” says School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Ben Freeman. He added though, while it’s an intriguing pattern, he would like to see future work test the hypothesis experimentally.

Professor and Georgia Tech Ocean Science and Engineering Co-Director Annalisa Bracco serves as the scientific advisor for Around the Blue, a new docufilm on ocean sustainability that follows ocean navigator Giovanni Soldini as he sails around the world, interviewing scientists working towards solutions for our oceans at each stop.

Presented at the Venice Film Festival on September 7 and endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade, the film will be released on Amazon towards the end of this year. Stay tuned at AroundtheBlue.org for the film’s public release in November, with English subtitles.

Related coverage: Giornale della Vela, Corriere della Sera, CNR, Style Magazine, Ciak Magazine, Press Mare, Seven Press, Il Messaggero, Daily Media/ecostampa.it, PUBBLICOMNOW, Touchpoint Today, SKYTG24, Rai Radio1, fattitaliani.it, spettacolomusicasport.com, orgoglionerd.it, and more.

Researchers at Georgia Tech, led by School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor M.G. Finn , along with researchers from MIT, revealed a new strategy for enabling immune system mobilization against cancer cells. The work, which appears in ACS Nano, produces exactly the type of anti-tumor immunity needed to function as a tumor vaccine - both prophylactically and therapeutically. Finn's research, along with two other groups, had previously identified a synthetic DC-SIGN binding group that directed cellular immune responses when used to decorate virus-like particles. But it was unclear whether this method could be utilized as an anticancer vaccine. Collaboration between researchers in the labs at MIT and Georgia Tech demonstrated that in fact, it could.