UTT Ph.D. student Mr. Aaron Balgobin publishes research article in prestigious journal - Science of the Total Environment (Impact Factor 4.61 and 5-year impact factor 4.98)

Mr. Aaron Balgobin, Ph.D. candidate of UTT's Centre for Maritime and Ocean Studies has recently published an article entitled "Source apportionment and seasonal cancer risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of sediments in a multi-use coastal environment containing a Ramsar wetland, for a Caribbean island".

Aaron's work was accepted for publication by the highly prestigious Elsevier journal, "Science of the Total Environment" (STOTEN), which is an International Journal for Scientific Research into the Environment and its Relationship with Humankind.

Aaron's paper expounded on the cancer risk which polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) substances pose to the population via marine sediments, given that a significant part of our population's food supply is derived from coastal regions such as the Gulf-of-Paria. The mean Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risks (ILCR) due to fish consumption from this region during both the dry and wet seasons was > 1 × 10-4, indicating a high cancer risk to the human population. The annual non-cancer risk (HQ) was > 1 at the 90th percentile level revealing an adverse health risk to about 14% of the population. These results can be utilised for developing an effective environmental management policy for coastal areas in Trinidad and the wider Caribbean region, given that much of the islands' populations depend on the coastal regions for their food supply. In addition, given that the major sources of PAHs into the environment are from gasoline and diesel fuel combustion, these results may assist in boosting current efforts of policymakers towards phasing out crude oil-based fossil fuels for cleaner energy sources such as compressed natural gas.

World Cancer Day was recently observed on February 4th, 2019, and this research, which comes at an important time should assist in bringing awareness to the contaminants present in the seafood we consume which are derived from our coasts and oceans in Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Balgobin is supervised by Dr. Natasha Ramroop Singh of the Health Sciences and Biomedical Engineering Unit.

Please click the link below to view the online copy of this paper:

https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1YY7mB8cckLEK

We congratulate Mr. Balgobin on his excellent work!