Diamond named Canadian environmental scientist of the year
ES&T editorial advisory board member Miriam Diamond is honored by Canadian Geographic.
Miriam Diamond laughs when she says that her current research started with a tiny finch known as the Arctic Redpoll. After studying northern latitudes, Diamond made a dramatic shift to urban landscapes. Her work has now been recognized by Canadian Geographic, which named her the Canadian environmental scientist of the year. Diamond received the award, now in its second year, on May 1.
A scientist, engineer, and modeler in the geography department at the University of Toronto, Diamond began her career at a time when acid rain was jump-starting the environmental science community. And despite the romance and enticement of the Arctic, Toronto became her new field area, she says. "My kids were growing up in the downtown city, [and I was] seeing them in the playground, seeing the cars go by," Diamond recalls. From her previous work on lead levels in the environment, she knew something must be happening in her own backyard.
Diamond's work on human exposures to chemical contaminants in urban areas shows an "understanding that it's not just lakes that get these things," says Deborah Swackhamer of the University of Minnesota, who serves with Diamond as a member of ES&T's editorial advisory board. "She's been able to do some very elegant work," starting with measurements of urban surfaces, such as windows and putting that data into modeling and beyond, Swackhamer comments, "to get the whole story: understanding risk."
Swackhamer points out that Diamond was one of the first to attempt to model mercury's entire path. "Modeling mercury emissions from power plants all the way up to fish is really not trivial," she says, in part because of the added challenge of mercury speciation. And Diamond didn't stop with metals such as mercury and lead: she has grappled with organics, such as PCBs; emerging contaminants, such as polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants; and other compounds, all of which require very different kinds of modeling. One of Diamond and her co-workers' recent models published in ES&T (2005, 39, 5121–5130) showed 100-fold increases in exposure to PBDEs, which are potential neurotoxins, for toddlers from household dust in homes with higher concentrations than average. That paper was one of the journal's most accessed articles in 2005. She and colleague Erin Hodge will be writing about "Urban Contaminant Dynamics: From Source to Effect" in the June issue of ES&T.
In addition to bringing toxicologists and chemists into her modeling work, Swackhamer points out, Diamond "takes it literally to where it matters; it's important to her to show the everyday significance to people . . . . That's one of her major contributions—not many people are able to make those kinds of bridges."
Swackhamer has known Diamond since the two scientists became friends at a modeling workshop run by Don Mackay, Diamond's Ph.D. advisor at the University of Toronto, in the 1980s. "We were probably some of the few women involved in that exercise," modeling Lake Ontario, Swackhamer says. Both see the need to "recognize and promote women, not at the expense of men, but [so] that they get the same opportunities," Swackhamer says.
Having faced the challenges of raising children while pursuing an academic career makes getting this award "very sweet," Diamond notes. "It shows that one can be a scientist and have a life." She was one of the first women who could take advantage of policies that stopped the tenure clock for parental leave. Those policies started the trend at other universities that followed suit across Canada, she says.
Canadian Geographic's editors chose to honor Diamond because her research is relevant and important for addressing current environmental problems, and the scientists they interviewed held her work in high regard. The announcement is included in the May/June issue of the magazine—an annual issue on the environment.
