The growing role of environmental forensics will be an important contribution to help protect the environment in the oil sands region. Recent collaborative research with the University of Warwick is focussing on the forensics of oil sands process waters.  The research focuses on fingerprinting the principal toxic components of the naphthenic acid fraction of oil sands process waters, which is thought to be the major fraction responsible for toxicity.  The need for greater understanding into the structures of these compounds is important in determining toxicity towards aquatic organisms. The Fourier transform mass spectrometer (FT-MS) approach is emerging from this research as a viable option to help characterize the environmental risk from the complex oil sand process water mixtures.

Dr. John Headley, the lead for Environment Canada’s priority initiative on the development of tools for oil sands environment forensics, conducted the collaborative experiments with Dr. Mark Barrow of the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, U.K. The experiments were conducted at the 12 Tesla high field FT-MS facility of the University to validate Environment Canada’s Orbitrap FT-MS located in the National Hydrological Research Institute, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. 

Contact: Dr. John Headley, john.headley@ec.gc.ca, Priority Substances Exposure Section