Recent Research Developments

A recent article in Science reports the findings of graduate student Doug Latch and Assistant Professor Kris McNeill, who have studied the photochemical behavior of solutions containing humic substances. While it has been known for decades that humic substances act as hydrophobic microenvironments within natural waters and that they are also responsible for sensitizing the formation of reactive species in natural waters, Latch and McNeill have shown that these two properties lead to enhanced photodegradation of hydrophobic compounds in natural waters. By using a chemiluminescent hydrophobic probe molecule that specifically reacts with singlet oxygen, electronically excited dioxygen, they have shown that there are significantly higher concentrations of singlet oxygen within the humic microenvironment than there is in the bulk aqueous solution. This has implications for the photodegradation of compounds in natural water and in similar microheterogeneous systems, such as cell membranes.

Microheterogeneity of Singlet Oxygen Distributions in Irradiated Humic Acid Solutions Douglas E. Latch and Kristopher McNeill http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1121636

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