On July 15, 2025, Wadsworth Center’s Nuclear Chemistry Laboratory (NCL), within the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, onboarded their third Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) fellow in the past three years.
Dr. Victoria Amato, NCL's first postdoctoral fellow, will be conducting research with NCL's Dr. Ezekiel Blain. Their research will involve investigating quench effects of water samples with high total dissolved solids content via liquid scintillation counting. This research is in support of the development of Standard Method 7110F, a new method being investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for determination of gross alpha and gross beta radioactivity in water samples.
The goal of the method is to extend capabilities of Standard Method 7110D to allow analysis of samples with > 400 mg/L of total dissolved solid content, applicable to matrices such as bioassay, food, and wastewater.