It’s all interconnected, Weizmann scientist says

Written by Shlomo Kapustin

Wednesday, 03 June 2009

TORONTO – As any observer of Middle Eastern realpolitik knows, all is interconnected; a push here, a pull there, can lead to a shove or tug miles away. Apparently, the same is true in the natural world. Professor Brian Berkowitz of Israel’s renowned Weizmann Institute, department of environmental sciences and energy research, pointed this out to an audience of about 100 recently at the Park Hyatt Hotel in downtown Toronto. The event was co-sponsored by the Canada-Israel Chamber of Commerce. Berkowitz, who hails from Edmonton, talked about Water, Energy, and the Environment: Science and Sustainability, making it clear that no single solution will materialize to solve what many consider to be the two most serious environmental challenges facing the world today. “It is a zero-sum game,” he said. “If you win somewhere, you lose somewhere else.… There ain’t no such thing as a magic bullet.” Take ethanol, for example. The latest cure-all for the much-predicted global energy shortage is produced from corn, but – even aside from the use of food to produce energy – Berkowitz bemoaned the water being converted into fuel, with water being used at a 4:1 ratio. Similarly, desalination – a reality of Israel’s water situation – sacrifices energy to produce water. Berkowitz’s work focusses on the analysis and modelling of fluid and chemical transport in geological formations, especially relating to groundwater systems. Groundwater represents 95 per cent of the earth’s accessible fresh water, he said. Berkowitz, who has been at Weizmann since 1993, was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2005, when he was also appointed editor of Water Resources Research, hydrology’s flagship journal. In 2007, Berkowitz was elected as a fellow of the Geological Society of America and in 2008 he was named ‘Inventor of the Year’ by Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd. (Yeda), Weizmann’s technology transfer arm. His laboratory is developing new methods to both prevent pollution and to clean water that is polluted by contaminants and heavy metals. While industrial substances and agrochemicals (such as pesticides) receive their fair share of media attention, domestic products are also a concern, said Berkowitz, with 90 per cent of drugs exiting from the body unchanged. But the water system is a closed one, so these toxins don’t leave, they just hide. It’s no surprise that traces of the anti-depressant Prozac were found in London’s drinking water supply in 2004, he said. Weizmann trumpets its pursuit of basic science, while still stressing its success in finding real-world solutions – from pharmaceuticals to the work of Berkowitz and his colleagues with environmental contaminants. To this end, Yeda (Hebrew for “knowledge”) works to bring Weizmann’s discoveries and technologies to the global marketplace. “Sometimes doing basic research leads to the really neat breakthroughs,” Berkowitz said.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 10 June 2009 )