Blog: musings from the SETAC conference in Berlin

by Dr Alice Baynes

Back, in what seems like an age-ago already (!), in May a whole gaggle of us IfE types attended the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) 6th World congress in Berlin.

As way of an introduction the SETAC conferences ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’, it is one of THE eco-toxicology meetings and pollution in every medium (land/water/air) and guise (well worn foes to emerging contaminates) are covered. In fact it’s almost overwhelmingly massive, a bit like the Glastonbury festival for eco-toxicology/chemistry geeks. However, it’s a fantastic place to showcase your research, to keep up-to-date with new techniques and findings, and to do a little (or a lot) of networking.
With this in mind I’ll begin with a little blatant self publicity for myself and my colleagues.

So we kicked off on Monday with a talk by Post-Doc researcher Dr Frances (‘Franky’) Orton about the additive anti-androgenic effects of a number of commonly used pesticides in an in vitro reporter cell system.

Also in the endocrine disrupting chemicals – recent developments session Prof Tom Hutchinson (CEFAS) presented a poster in collaboration with two of my IfE colleagues (Dr Jayne Brian and Nicola Beresford) about evaluating the endocrine activity of plant leaf extracts.

On Tuesday Post-Doc researcher Dr Luigi Margiotta-Casaluci gave a talk on his work relating to the mechanisms of human pharmaceuticals in fish; specifically 5α-reductase inhibitors. In the same session, on pharmaceuticals and their fate, exposure and effects in the environment, PhD student Alpa Patel presented a poster focused on her research on the effects of ibuprofen on fathead minnows. Wednesday was our day of rest presenting wise; which was probably a good thing as we’d all rather enjoyed the Tuesday night ‘student’ party!

Thursday was busy again. In the amphibian and reptile session IfE lecture Dr Daniel Pickford presented a talk and a poster, the talk related to the screening of toad breeding ponds in the UK for endocrine activity and the poster presented the effects of larval estrogen exposure on adult breeding potential in western clawed frogs. In the same session Dr Franky Orton was at it again, this time presenting preliminary results of novel methods for assessing amphibian health. In the wastewater effluent discharges session PhD student Chris Green presented a poster (pictured) about predictive modelling of estrogens in UK and Australian river systems and I gave a talk asking whether we need expensive advanced sewage treatment technologies to prevent feminization of fish. In the same session PhD student Carlos Constantino gave a poster corner presentation about the impacts of advanced wastewater treatment on metal speciation and bio-availability.  All our talks and posters gained a fair amount of interest, questions and feedback so a great week was had by all.

So enough (never!) about us, what other presentations were there to see? Well far too many to mention here, if you don’t believe me – then try downloading the six part (552 pages) pdf of abstracts! If not you’ll have to put up with my personal highlights:

Monday, something useful! John W Green’s talk on statistical methods relating to the analysis of histopathology ‘score’ may well be a complete god send.

Tuesday – something new. The talks on the emerging issue of micro-plastics in the marine environment were engaging; that’s what is great about these conferences you can learn about research that is completely different to your own field. I also went to lots of talks about statistics (Bayesian models) on Tuesday but I won’t pretend I understand it all yet, but it’s something I need to work on.

Wednesday – the whole session on science and our need for our interactions with the general public and policy were great. Highlighting lots of lesions to learn about public engagement and Berghahn and Rinn’s film (‘Keep your boots muddy!’) about the German aquatic testing facility was a great combination of art, public engagement and human stories.

Thursday, for me, was all about the effects of wastewater on our wildlife. Gerald Tetreault’s talk about the occurrence of intersex fish downstream of Canadian wastewater treatment plant effluents was extremely good and from the email correspondence to both Chris Green and myself the possibility of future collaborations with this group is quite exciting (especially to jetsetter Chris!).
   
So, what now? Well its back to the lab again with our heads full of new ideas. We all had a great time, made lots of new contacts and a few new friends. We’ll all be looking forward to the next opportunity to show off our research but first we’d better push on with our experiments!