Read the full article by Syl Kacapyr (Cornell Chronicle)
“Among the technical inquiries spanning topics like cyclodextrin polymers and mass spectrometry that were stacked in Damian Helbling’s inbox was a question about four golden retrievers.
A local woman had contacted Helbling, a professor in Cornell’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a leading researcher of trace organic chemicals in water, wanting to know if it was safe for her dogs to swim in a nearby pond.
‘I also have a golden retriever that loves to swim and I absolutely sympathize with this question,’ Helbling said, ‘but I hesitate to give a concrete answer when people ask me such specific questions about the safety of their water. As a researcher, I tend to look at the situation through a totally different lens.’
For Helbling, the question isn’t simply whether a pond is safe. It’s what science can do to better understand the problem, and what engineering can do to solve it.”…