ENVIRONMENTAL FORENSIC RESEARCH CENTRE

PENGENALAN

Environmental forensics is necessary to determine and characterize point and non-point source pollutants released to Malaysian terrestrial and aquatic environments. Malaysia needs environmental forensics to pin down the polluters since the techniques enable the expert to accurately trace the origin of toxic pollutants spilled into the environment. Malaysian coastal waters are bombarded with land and sea-based pollution sources. From the sea, we have oil spills from the supertankers. When the spill reaches the shore, the whole ecosystem are affected including the livelihood of the fisherman, killing the mangroves, reduction of fishery resources and aesthetics. From land, we have pollutants from urban runoffs, industrial effluents, leachates, domestic wastewaters and used crank-case oils. These pollutants are transported to rivers and estuaries and to the ocean. Tracing down the origin of these multiple diffuse sources of pollutants is now possible with Environmental Forensics techniques established in UPM.

APPROACH

• The Environmental Forensics Techniques employs molecular marker approach to identify pollution sources.
• Once established it can be a powerful tool for state-of-the-art monitoring and pinning the down the culprits who spill the toxic chemicals into the environment.
• The technique can be adopted as a policy instrument for environmental clean-up and preservation.
• Multiple approaches were used:
  • Environmental Monitoring
  • Environmental Risk Assessment
  • Environmental Modeling
  • Environmental Policy, Governance and Socio-economic

BENEFITS

• Tracing down the source of pollutants will help rid of our environments against contaminants.
• The contaminants that we are dealing with now are emerging pollutants that are not only difficult to trace and characterize but are extremely ubiquitous in the environment. They are extremely toxic to organisms, posess bioaccumulative properties and are very persistent. Identification of the exact source of those pollutants will ease the government’s burden of routine monitoring, environmental campaigns and awareness, etc.
• Eliminating the pollutants at the source is always cheaper than cleaning up the environment after the spills has occurred. Identification of the pollutant at the source is the strength and beauty of Environmental Forensics!
• The government can save millions in terms of health costs due to problems caused by eating contaminated vegetables, seafoods and drinking contaminated water. Getting rid of pollutants from reaching the environment will improve the health of the ecosystems and in return will help increase the quality of life.

COMPETITORS

• Environmental Forensics is a brand new discipline in Environmental sciences. It uses exact science in tracing down pollutant sources.
• UPM is well equipped with modern and state-of-the-art instrumentations to deal with complex environmental samples. UKM, USM and UiTM may have their own environmental laboratories but they are not dealing with Environmental Forensics and none of them can be classified as true Environmental Forensics.
• UPM stands alone at the top as the only Research Center of Excellence for Environmental Forensics.
• Our track record in the field is a testimony that we have left all the competitors far behind and we will never look back.