Human Practices

What is Human Practices?

Human practices, as described by Peter Carr, the Director of Judging, “Is the study of how your work affects the world, and how the world affects your work”. Our Human Practices team underwent a process to understand what human practices are, with the help of our mentors, in part by conducting research on why ethics are important in the practice of synthetic biology. Human practices consist of three aspects: reflection, responsibility, and responsiveness. Reflection represents ethics in biology and integrating them in any designs or plans; responsibility is keeping yourself, your team, and your project accountable for your actions; and responsiveness is responsible engagement with the public.

Reflection

We began our work by using the WAIR (Wheel of Action, Interaction and Reflection) to consider the ethical issues related to our project. We began by thinking about how the UN Sustainable Development Goals could be impacted by our project.

• SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation. We know that runoff of PCBs can contaminate the water. We wanted to know whether known water sources for humans are contaminated with PCBs. We wanted to know what safety steps we should take to be able to introduce genetically engineered organisms into water sources safely.
• SDG3: Good Health and Well-Being. We wanted to know whether there are treatments for PCB exposure since we know that some people don't have access to medical care. We wanted to know how PCBs harm human health and what is the mechanism. We wanted to know how many people are affected each year and does it affect people equally.
• SDG 15: Life on Land. We wanted to know whether animals are harmed by PCBs. Do they build up in the animals or fish that we eat?Do PCBs affect particular species or lead to species decline? Do PCBs affect ecosystems and disrupt food chains?
• SDG12: Responsible Production and Consumption. Are we relying more on new water sources that would increase PCB exposure? What are the recommendations about what we eat? About sport fishing? Does it disrupt people's food sources? Do fishermen know about this or do we need to avoid eating certain fish?

We then thought about what negative impacts our project could have on people or the environment. We thought about the knowledge we would need to gain and what we could do to minimize harm.

• How would our solution affect wildlife populations?
• Talk to people involved in PCB detection in fish
• Talk to commercial fishermen about whether they think about this issue and does it affect them economically.
• Are all communities equally affected by PCBs? Are they regulated at the level of the state or federal?
• How big of an effect would our solution have? How many bacteria would actually be needed to do cleanup?
• What are the effects and health effects of these products? What about partial breakdown? Would our solution produce any byproducts?

Learning About PCBs

We spent a lot of time learning about PCBs and one of us gave a presentation for our high school about the history of PCBs in NY and MD.

Download our presentation: History of PCBs in NY and MD

Stakeholders

Dr. Kurt Stowers, University of Maryland Baltimore County, expert in breakdown of PCBs by microbes

To understand how our project would affect our community and the world at large, and to understand what work has alrelady been done in relation to our project, we contacted and spoke with stakeholders and specialists. One of these specialists was Dr. Kurt Sowers, an anaerobic microbiologist who is working on mass production of bacteria that naturally degrade PCBs in an effort to decontaminate soil. His methods involved storing these bacteria in carbon pellets and spraying them on contaminated environments. Dr. Sowers spoke with us at a zoom meeting, where we discussed our projects together.

In regard to our genetically engineered degrading bacteria, Dr. Sowers told us that by using naturally degrading bacteria without any alterations, he had less regulations to overcome. However, we do believe that genetically engineered bacteria, once we overcome the obstacles of regulations, will be more efficient. Dr. Sowers' project also taught us about his methods of responsibility and sustainability. To prevent his organisms from becoming invasive species, he contains them in carbon pellets and constantly tests them for environmental impact.

Integrated Human Practices

We made several changes to our project design after talking with Dr. Sowers. In regard to our biosensor, Dr. Sowers advised us to extract PCBs from soil samples using hexane when using our biosensor to detect PCBs.In response to our discussion with Dr. Sowers, we decided to also emphasize sustainability in our project by ensuring that our organisms do not become invasive species.This led us to talking with Dr. Kelly Bunker of the EPA as we talk about below. We also discussed educating the public with Dr. Sowers, as he recognized the concern that the public is wary of introducing new organisms in the environment. Recognizing this, our education team continued its work with this taken into account and to focus on public education. Dr. Sowers also talked about the hardest problem of breaking down PCBs with natural microbes as being the first anaerobic step which is not efficient. We therefore focused our project engineering the genes that work on the first anaerobic steps in the pathway. Additionally, in response to Dr. Sower’s talk, Genspace decided to apply his extraction policy and the education team decided to continue raising awareness about the PCB problem.

Ms. Kelly Bunker, EPA, expert in PCB contamination and cleanup

Then, we spoke with Kelly Bunker, our regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officer associated with PCB regulation. She also spoke with our team for more than an hour on Zoom. Our discussion with her revealed how ubiquitous PCB contamination is, and how it has been used throughout history. She told us about current PCB removal processes and regulations, as well as initiatives the EPA has undertaken to raise public awareness of PCB concerns.

Integrated Human Practices

Speaking with Kelly Bunker informed us of the imporatance of conducting our project in accordance with the government’s policies and led us to research EPA policies and to create a detailed project implementation plan based on our findings. This became the main focus of our team's Implementation work.

Dr. Nathalie Lombard, UMBC, expert in PCB degradation

After speaking with Kelly Bunker, we spoke with Dr. Nathalie Lombard, who also works with investigating PCB contamination. Our discussion with her taught us about the impacts of newly introduced organisms on the environment.

Integrated Human Practices

Based on the feedback from Dr. Lombard, we realized that implementing our project in waterways might not be the best idea. Even though our implementation team focused on the steps and processes for EPA approval for release and put together a detailed plan, we realized that we might need a backup. So we also thought about implementing our project in a contained bioreactor that the contaminated water could be passed through. To see whether this was a reasonable option, our math modeling team focused on modeling metabolism of the bacteria in a bioreactor.

Amelia Grant-Alfieri, MPH, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ph.D. candidate on multi-pollutant exposure, and its effects on Women’s Health

After our discussion with Dr. Nathalie Lombard, we spoke with Amelia Grant-Alfieri, a graduate student from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, better to understand the toxic effect of PCB. Amelia Grant-Alfieri is currently studying the epidemiology of multi-pollutant exposure in women. Her talk focused on a public health perspective on PCB contamination, with an emphasis on women’s health. During her presentation, she provided a background on the principles of public health and how those principles influence her research. Additionally, she explained that previous public health research has not factored in women and people from vulnerable communities into their studies, which has skewed the epidemiological effect of chemical exposure, such as PCBs. PCB is a non-polar molecule; thus, it accumulates in fat deposits in humans for long periods of time. This acute but chronic exposure has been correlated to multiple health issues, such as diabetes, heart disease, irregular menstruation cycles, and early menopause.

Integrated Human Practices

After speaking with Amelia, we thought about potential changes to implementing our project. She provided the epidemiological pathway on how PCBs entered our bodies and advised us to target waterways that are close to industrial sites as they have the highest concentration of PCBs. These waterways allow the chemical to seep into the bodies of water used in agriculture. By targeting these waterways, we could significantly reduce PCB exposure in adolescents and adults.

Future Plans

We have plans to speak with other local organizations that work with water contamination. We spent time researching these organizations and their missions, including:

Clean Water Action

Download our presentation: Clean Water Action

NY Riverkeeper

Download our presentation: NY Riverkeeper

Blue Water Baltimore

Download our presentation: Blue Water Baltimore

Our long term goal is to apply for an Environmental Protection Agency Grant, and we project this goal to be achieved by October 2024. We have outlined a plan to apply for this grant see our implementation work and are in the process of completing it.

Conclusion

In conclusion, our Human Practices team reflected the values of human practices by contacting stakeholders and specialists and reflecting upon and implementing what we learned from those discussions, and integrating our new insights back into our project design, implementation, and education plans. One of the most significant of these integrations was creating our project and implementation plans in accordance with EPA policies.