海角社区

Environmental Sciences Assistant Professor Bikram Subedi is using the power of chemistry to make Louisiana healthier.

Subedi, who came to 海角社区鈥檚 Department of Environmental Sciences last year, uses advanced analytical chemistry to provide communities and state officials with much needed information about pressing issues, such as illegal drug use and forever chemicals in drinking and surface water.

CC&E caught up with Subedi to learn more about his research, what inspires him, and what he wants people to know.

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What inspires your research?

It's a public health issue - drug epidemiology, and also public health associated with chemical exposure. The current profile of disease we have- especially in developed countries-is mainly chronic disease, due not only to genes, but also due to the exposure to these chemicals. My expertise is to look at these different types of chemicals the public is exposed to, and use analytical methods able to quantify them accurately and precisely.  

Tell us about your wastewater research.

We鈥檙e trying really to understand the prevalence of the use of drugs in our communities across the state and the region. We are monitoring the trend in the use of several illicit drugs, like cocaine, meth, even fentanyl and some prescription drugs of potential abuse. At the same time, we're also looking for some novel drugs that haven鈥檛 been detected, new psychoactive substances.

How do you discover what to test for?

So this is how typically we work: the drug comes on the market, right? And then law enforcement typically finds it, or the forensic labs report a small frequency of it, like few people start using. Then we start following that drug (and similar other) in wastewater, so we can monitor the trend, the use of that drug over time.

You also work with PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. Is it the same wastewater testing process?

No. The problem with the PFAS is when we drink water, when we prepare/eat food, when we inhale dust, or when we breathe air, those are the main sources of human exposure to these chemicals. So those are the things that will be our analytic environmental samples, like drinking water, fish, shrimp, and surface water, because that's what we use for the drinking water in many of our communities in Louisiana.

Last year, EPA finalized PFAS maximum levels in drinking water and planning for PFAS-Outreach Initiatives to address capital improvement in public water utilities to address at least two PFAS: PFOA and PFOS. But we are monitoring more than 30 PFAS to establish a PFAS baseline levels across the state.

What is the environmental impact of these chemicals?

There鈥檚 so many different types of human health issues being correlated with the intake of these chemicals, like cholesterol level, obesity, diabetes, kidney and testicular cancer, etc.

Of these two main lines of research, what has been the thing you鈥檝e discovered that surprised you the most?

Well, what surprised me the most is our capability to determine the near real time use of drugs. We can determine how much of the total cocaine consumed yesterday in the entirety of Baton Rouge. It鈥檚 basically within 24 hours.

How do you do you do that?
The wastewater treatment facility has devices called auto-samplers that draws wastewater samples every 15 minutes and composite it in a big container. After 24 hours, we go there, collect samples and bring it to the lab and process it. Then it takes few hours to get the data, we are capable of detecting those drugs.