BLUE HILL --– On Thursday, August 14, as part of the Marine Environmental Research Institute’s summer lecture series, Margaret Quinn, MERI’s Education Program Coordinator, will present a slide talk on the impacts of historic mining on a marine ecosystem, focusing specifically on the Callahan Mine site in Brooksville. The program will take place at 7:30 p.m. at the MERI Center for Marine Studies on Main Street in Blue Hill. An open house reception for the speaker will follow the presentation. The public is invited to attend; please call in advance to reserve seating.

“We are pleased to welcome Margaret Quinn to the MERI Education Department staff. Her background in research on the impacts of historic mining will be invaluable to MERI and the community as we begin to address the impact of the Callahan Mine on human health and the local marine environment,” says Dr. Susan D. Shaw, Director and Founder of MERI.

Extracting ore resources from the earth can cause substantial environmental impacts. Open-pit mining can expose sulfide-rich rocks laden with heavy metals, which can pose health risks to wildlife and people. The former Callahan Mine at Harborside in Brooksville, Maine is a very unique historic heavy metal mine located in the estuarine waters off of Penobscot Bay. In September 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed the Callahan Mine as a Superfund site due to elevated heavy metal levels found in soil and surface waters at the site, and the lack of management of these waters. The Callahan Mine was a copper/zinc mine, most actively mined from 1968 through 1972, when the operation was completed because the ore was exhausted. At that time, the mine was the only heavy metal mine in the world interfacing with the marine environment.

The unique location of this mine, and the potential hazards present, raise many questions for scientists, public health officials and the general public. For example, high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, selenium, and zinc have been found in the soil and surface waters at the Callahan Mine site. Copper, selenium and zinc are essential nutrients in small quantities, but selenium is a neurotoxin and zinc is an immunosuppressant when concentrations are too high in humans. In addition, arsenic and cadmium are carcinogenic as well as endocrine disruptors, and lead is a neurotoxin.

After the Callahan Mine was listed as a Superfund site, MERI was asked by the EPA to be the community advocate organization (1) to ensure community involvement and awareness of hazards and remediation that will be carried out at the site and (2) to manage additional scientific studies that address community health concerns. MERI was selected for this role after it formed a broad coalition of organizations and individuals from Brooksville and across the Blue Hill Peninsula who represent the communities impacted by this Superfund site.

Margaret Quinn’s presentation at the MERI Center on August 14 will be the first of many public information forums sponsored by MERI to assist the community in understanding the complex issues associated with the Callahan Mine Superfund site. Quinn joined the MERI staff as Education Program Coordinator in June 2003. Prior to joining MERI, she spent a year at the Teton Science School in Jackson, Wyoming, and taught high school science at the Burke Academy in Vermont. Quinn received a Masters degree in Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College, where her thesis focused on the environmental impacts of an historic Montana gold mine on an inland stream ecosystem, including the potential bioaccumulation of heavy metals in the food chain.

MERI, a non-profit organization founded in 1990 to protect the health of the marine environment through research and education, sponsors periodic lecture programs addressing issues impacting the Maine Coast. Please call in advance to reserve seating. For information on MERI’s most recent research, or to learn about the programs it offers through its Center for Marine Studies, call 207-374-2135, Email: meri@downeast.net, or visit MERI online at www.meriresearch.org.

MERI Education Program Coordinator Margaret Quinn, M.S., will speak on impacts of historical mining on marine ecosystems.