Pat Owens, Professor of Chemistry and Chair
owensp@winthrop.edu, Biographical Sketch (NIH Format)
Ph.D. UNC Chapel Hill, 1984
Courses this semester:  General Chemistry II
Research: Environmental Chemistry, Parallel Column GC, Recent Publications
Service:  U.S. Chemical Weapon Disposal, Plant Visits, Monitoring Reports 
External Grants/Contracts: NIH Biomedical Research, AQ Data Analysis
Courses I teach at Winthrop:  Chemometrics, Advanced Environmental Chemistry, Physical Chemistry II, Environmental Chemistry,
Summer 2006 Schedule   Summer 2007 Schedule Introductory Chemometrics, General Chemistry I, General Chemistry II

General Chemistry Reform:  A New Approach to General Chemistry II that Focuses on Biomedical Applications and Neuroscience

Winthrop University Molecular Biomedical Research Initiative (Winthrop Press Release)

Improving citizens’ health represents a major need for South Carolina. One recent study ranks the State fifth in the nation for stroke deaths, third in cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths, and seventh in ischemic heart disease deaths.  South Carolina also has some of the highest cancer rates in the nation, ranking in the top 10 nationwide for five to 10 different types of cancer with perhaps the highest prostate cancer mortality rate of any state.  Particularly hard-hit are African American South Carolinians, for whom CVD illnesses result in ten years of lost life and for whom prostate and lung cancer incidences are 50 to 60 percent higher than national averages.

In recognition of these major human health concerns and as South Carolina’s second largest primarily undergraduate institution (PUI), Winthrop University is planning to establish a nationally distinctive biomedical research program.  Over the next five years, Winthrop University will receive nearly $ 2.4 million from the National Institutes of Health to assist in accomplishing this goal.

Key elements of the proposed multidisciplinary biomedical research program include:

Research

Environmental Chemistry:

Winthrop University's location within the Rock Hill-Charlotte-Gastonia Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) provides a unique opportunity to directly examine environmental problems being encountered in rapidly emerging U.S. economic centers.

Air:
The Charlotte MSA is routinely ranked among the ten U.S. metropolitan regions most adversely affected by the formation of summertime tropospheric ozone (to learn more about the chemistry of ground-level ozone synthesis, see recent Winthrop Environmental Symposium presentation entitled Charlotte-Rock Hill-Gastonia MSA Summertime Ozone Formation).
A  research project conducted by Winthrop chemistry major Jenny Perry during the late 1990's focused on correlating regional tropospheric ozone levels with growth in the Charlotte region over the past decade and with mobile sources (automobiles, buses, and trucks).  Jenny worked with both the state of North and South Carolina environmental divisions and with the Departments of Transportation in the Carolinas. She presented her results to the Mecklenburg County Department of Environmental Protection, to the North Carolina Division of Air Quality, and at the national meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association. Upon graduation from Winthrop, Jenny attended graduate school in chemistry at Duke University.  She completed a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry at Duke in under four years and was competitively awarded a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Environmental Health in Research Triangle Park, NC.  Based upon Dr. Perry's undergraduate research at Winthrop University, the peer-reviewed paper “Weekday/Weekend Variability and Long-Term Trends in Traffic, CO, NOy, and Ozone for the Charlotte Metropolitan Area during the 1990's" was accepted for publication in the 2001 Proceedings of the Air and Waste Management Association’s 94th Annual Conference and Exhibition.  Jenny's research results clearly demonstrated that, over an 11 year period, daily weekend ozone levels at all monitoring stations in the Charlotte region could not be statistically differentiated from daily weekday ozone readings, in spite of significantly reduced observed ozone precursor pollutant emissions (~30%) on weekend days. These research results provide air quality planners in the Carolinas with a clear understanding that emission reductions for 1-2 days at a time will have no effect on Charlotte regional ozone levels and point to the need to implement emission control strategies throughout the entire summer ozone season.

Surface Water:
The Catawba River watershed provides an opportunity to directly evaluate the environmental impacts of a major metropolitan region on a large watershed.  Winthrop's downstream location from Charlotte provides an ideal setting for these studies.  The department has purchased ICP and GC/MS/MS analytical instrumentation to support this project.  In fall 2004, a project was initiated by John Turner to begin surveying trace organics found in the Catawba watershed, particular those with anthropogenic origins. Preliminary GC/MS results from student research revealed the presence of siloxanes in WWTP effluents.  This finding was not a surprising result, since landfill gas has been found by several groups to contain similar siloxanes and a number of WWTP sludge analyses have revealed the presence of these ubiquitous substances.  Recent research at Dow also points to the expected presence of these substances in water that is in equilibrium with siloxane-containing solids.   John Turner's research experience on this project provided him with the necessary professional background to obtain an analytical chemistry position with the Norfolk-Virginia Beach metropolitan region water quality laboratory.

Parallel column gas chromatography: The focus of this research centers on the development of parallel column gas chromatography as a general analytical tool for trace detection of pollutants. Parallel column GC involves replacing the single column used in conventional GC separations with a parallel set of columns having different stationary phases. Effluents from injected samples are split among the parallel columns and recombined at the detector. Each compound is detected as a unique sequence of peaks due to different retention properties on the various GC stationary phases. This provides a new dimension of analytical information and increases the degree of confidence in analytical identifications. MS and MS/MS provide the necessary detector selectivity to allow sufficient generation of peak capacity. Multidimensional chromatography allows further selectivity optimization.

Recent Presentations, Technical Reports, and Publications  (** Denotes work done by undergraduate student)

Service:  U.S. Chemical Weapon Disposal Program

Work with the Centers for Disease Control as a member of the Federal Occupational Health Service over the past three years has provided substantive opportunity to participate in the ongoing national efforts to eliminate all chemical weapons (nerve agents GB & VX and mustard blister agent HD) that are currently stored at eight locations across the country.  To meet chemical disarmament treaty requirements, the U.S. chemical weapon demilitarization program has recently dramatically expanded; going from one operational facility in 2002 to the simultaneous operation of six disposal plants in 2005.  Chemical combustion and chemical neutralization are the technologies being used to safely eliminate the chemical weapon inventory.  External reviews by CDC provide citizens with confidence that these nerve agent and mustard agent disposal plants are being operated safely and are being monitored with the best available and reliable analytical technology.  Week-long on-site reviews at each disposal plant  focus primarily on the chemical agent monitoring program.  These visits include a physical examination of monitoring stations throughout each disposal plant, to include nontoxic and toxic areas, process flue ducts and furnace stacks, and perimeter monitoring stations that form a ring around each facility.  A detailed review of laboratory analytical instrumentation and procedures is also made.  Perhaps the most important measure is the close scrutiny given to quality assurances measures being implemented to ensure, and to provide scientific data on a daily basis, that chemical agent monitors are fully functional and that the numbers they report reflect best practices in analytical chemistry.

The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is the international treaty banning possession and use of chemical weapons.  In 1984, as Vice-President of the United Statues, George H.W. Bush, presented the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva with a draft treaty that became the framework for the CWC.  The treaty was signed by the U.S. Secretary of State in 1993 and subsequently ratified by Congress.  The CWC became effective in April 1997 and requires all parties to complete destruction of all chemical weapons no later than April 2012.

Public Law 99-145, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1985, requires the US Department of Defense to dispose of all chemical weapons in its inventory.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is mandated by federal law to oversee the plans of the Department of Defense.  The Secretary of Defense is required to implement CDC's recommendations for precautionary measures to protect the public health and safety. In carrying out these activities, CDC's primary focus has been on preventing potential problems that could adversely affect the health of disposal site workers and the surrounding communities.  During operations at chemical weapons destruction facilities, CDC conducts periodic on-site reviews for the purpose of ensuring safety. Because air monitoring is a critical element in detecting any possible agent release incidents, CDC regularly examines air monitoring procedures and strategies, including the number and placement of air monitors as well as the quality of the data from these systems.

Each disposal site is equipped with an array of low-level chemical agent monitors that are capable of alarming to part-per-trillion air concentrations of chemical agents within 3-5 minutes.  These monitors are backed up by collocated sorbent samplers that allow subsequent analysis in sophisticated on-site laboratories.  Gas chromatography coupled with flame photometric detection (specific for phosphorus in nerve agent and sulfur in mustard agent) is the primary analytical tool being used to meet these requirements. Sites also have gas chromatographs equipped with capillary columns having different stationary phases and chemical ionization mass spectrometers in laboratories available to confirm or to refute monitor alarms. Each disposal location has a set of perimeter samplers that are carried to the laboratory for analysis by instruments capable of part-per-quadrillion detection of chemical agent vapors.  The monitoring program includes an extensive quality assurance network that requires each monitoring system to be routinely challenged with low levels of chemical agent to continually demonstrate that they are fully functional.

The oversight role of CDC focuses largely upon monitoring capabilities, since these continually assure that worker and public health is being protected.  They also provide plant operators with early warning of any process conditions that may eventually cause migration of agent above established health levels.  CDC recently conducted a review of chemical agent exposure levels and, based upon toxicological data and current risk assessment methodology, implemented a new set of GB, VX, and HD Airborne Exposure Levels (AEL's) that lowered even further allowable concentrations by factors of three to ten.  Sites have had to optimize and to refine monitoring procedures and technologies to detect agent at these lower levels with the same degree of confidence.  Nowhere else in the world is such intensive low-level monitoring for chemical warfare agents with confidence being conducted; the chemical demilitarization agent monitoring program literally represents the current state of the art.

Completed On-Site Visits and Chemical Agent Monitoring Program Reviews at U.S. Chemical Weapon Disposal Plants:

Chemical Warfare Agent Monitoring Program Technical Evaluation Reports Written :

Courses I Teach

General Chemistry I & II (CHEM 105-106)
An introductory course for science majors. The course focuses on modern topics such as environmental chemistry, biochemistry, nuclear chemistry, cosmochemistry and geochemistry, and polymers materials science.

Introductory Chemometrics  (CHEM312)
This is a short course in Chemometrics, the application of mathematical and statistical techniques for the analysis of chemical data sets.

Quantitative Analysis (CHEM313)
A comprehensive course in modern Analytical Chemistry.  The course begins with a block on statistics and calibration, followed by analysis of complex chemical equilibria. The heart of the course focuses on modern analytical fields by examining the major chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques and instrumentation used in modern analytical laboratories. The last portion examines classical analytical techniques as well as sample preparation.

Environmental Chemistry (CHEM 315)
A comprehensive overview of environmental chemistry. Students examine a wide range of topics that provides the necessary foundation to understand the key issues involving atmospheric, aquatic, organic and metallic pollutants.

Physical Chemistry (CHEM410)
A laboratory course that applies quantum theory and spectroscopic measurements to chemical structures of interest.  The focus of the course is to develop an appreciation for the advantages and limitations of quantum theory, to demonstrate competence in determining molecular properties from spectroscopic data, and to relate properties determined spectroscopically with those predicted by quantum theory. During the course students will conduct semi-empirical or ab initio (Hartree-Fock) calculations for free atoms, conjugated carbon systems, and simple molecules.  Students will also determine vibrational frequencies and rotational energy barriers predicted using ab initio methods.  Spectroscopically, students will acquire diode array and dual-beam UV/Vis electronic spectra, IR gas phase spectra, and dynamic NMR experiments and relate these to predictions made from quantum calculations.

Advanced Environmental Chemistry (CHEM517)
An advanced course that includes field sampling, laboratory work with advanced instrumentation, examination of the physical processes underlying modern environmental research building on concepts learned in physical chemistry.

Gas Chromatography (CHEM561)
This is an advanced short course in Gas Chromatography, the most widely used technique for the separation and identification of volatile compounds. This courses focuses on separation theory, injection techniques, column optimization, detectors, qualitiative and quantitative techniques, advanced GC techniques, and modern applications of GC.