Fourteen years ago, walking along a riverbank in southeast Oklahoma, Professor Kenneth Roberts, chair of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, noticed the shells of several dead mussels and how their annual growth layers formed a pattern similar to the rings on a tree trunk, and it gave him an idea.
As an analytical chemist, Roberts would often take samples of water to test for toxins and pollutants in rivers and streams across the state, but such tests provided only a snapshot of water quality, he said. Mussels, however, spend most of their lives filtering water. “In doing so,” Roberts realized, “they are essentially sampling the water quality over a 100-year period and storing a historic record of water quality in their shells.”
Roberts has pioneered the use of mussels to monitor toxic metal pollution in waterways across Oklahoma. Pollution or climate stress can be observed by studying the growth layers within a mussel’s shell, giving researchers a way to observe how water quality has changed over an extended period of time. “We have seen that mussels are great indicators of water quality and the overall health of an ecosystem,” Roberts said.
He originally used mussels to study heavy metal pollution from the Tar Creek Superfund site in northeast Oklahoma, where old mining operations left behind huge piles of waste that have contaminated the area with lead, zinc, and cadmium.
By 2017, however, Roberts’ research had inspired him to get involved with the Kiamichi River Legacy Alliance, a grassroots group fighting plans to supply Oklahoma City with drinking water from southeastern Oklahoma. The plan would drain 83% of the Kiamichi River, devastating species and impacting tourism and other activities in the area, Roberts said. His research with mussels has helped opponents argue their case in state and federal courts, where the battle continues. Threatening the Kiamichi “really got me sideways,” he says. “It is one of two rivers in Oklahoma that are considered clean enough to provide ‘critical habitat’ for a mussel species, where it can only live in that river.”
Both graduate and undergraduate students participate in Roberts’ research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, American Geophysical Union, and other federal, state, and local agencies.
Some students focus on the biochemistry of pollutants accumulating in the mussels while others concentrate on the water chemistry or the geology of the region, Roberts said. They look forward to taking field trips twice a year, during both the hottest and coldest weather.
“We know there’s a big pollution problem” in Oklahoma rivers, Roberts said. “That’s really not anything new.” Researchers have been talking about water pollution so long that state officials seem to have grown complacent, he said. But mussels have given him a more impactful way to describe the effects of heavy metals and other types of water pollution.
“There is a bigger concern because this isn’t just getting into the mussels,” he said. “Toxic metals build up in the animals that eat the mussels. The same story is true for fish in the Kiamichi River ecosystem and the animals and people that eat them.”
Roberts came to UTulsa in 2002 with a background in chemical toxicology. The university has given him opportunities to conduct research in a much wider range of areas, including nanotechnology, bioweapon sensors, implantable glucose monitors, geoscience, cannabis, and interplanetary space travel.
Roberts has even helped develop a filter to block unwanted wavelengths of sunlight and improve the efficiency of solar panels, allowing photovoltaic cells to generate high electrical output without being exposed to damaging heat.
Thanks to UTulsa, “I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about research in other disciplines.”
