Joseph Schwartz, Ben Platz, Ben Peng (not shown)
Writing 101: H20 101
Instructor: Jamie Browne
A Proposal
for Optimal
Removal of
Benzo[a]pyrene
from Houston
Waterways
Biography
Joseph Schwartz
Over the course of the semester, my academic writing course H2O 101 introduced me to the struggles many face to ensure that the water in their environment is healthy from the perspectives of both personal use and ecological benefit. Our instructor, Jamie Browne, introduced us to carefully chosen case studies including Flint, Michigan, and the Keystone pipeline, which we collectively analyzed and discussed. This revealed the roles that factors like environmental justice, climate change, and ecological theory play in access to water that benefits people and their environment.
H2O 101 has also broadened my perspective of water beyond the Delmarva peninsula, the area where I was born and raised. The peninsula’s intricate labyrinth of tributaries set between the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean have always provided an abundance of opportunity in the area through ecotourism, trade, and other industries. I’ve benefited from such opportunities myself, working as a boat mechanic during high school. This class reaffirmed the idea that water is not always such a plentiful and useful resource. Even in places where it is abundant, access to water and the opportunities it can provide may be extremely limited. One great example of this is Houston, the location our research proposal aims to study. Despite its proximity to Galveston Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and numerous tributaries, the water quality of the area varies greatly. Areas that are often near lower income communities tend to have worse water quality, and the onset of environmental changes like global warming only exacerbate the worsening water conditions. I feel fortunate to have learned about the societal nature of water through this class and to have had the chance to apply my knowledge in my group’s research proposal. I would like to thank my partners in my writing group, Ben Platz and Ben Peng, for their help constructing this proposal. I would also like to thank Jamie Browne for her continuous support and instruction that challenged us to better understand water’s role in the world around us. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Sheryl Emch and the Deliberations Editorial Board for their constructive feedback that elevated our proposal.
Biography
Ben Platz
While taking Writing 101: H2O 101, I was exposed to many intricacies of water that I had never thought about before. From environmental justice to droughts to wetlands, the course focused on several case studies that provided constant new insights about water in the world. Specifically, as someone who has a special interest in healthcare, I found how pollutants interact with the body to pique my interest.
One place that comes to mind when I think of water pollution is somewhere I have visited countless times in my childhood – Houston in Harris County, Texas. With its numerous industrial districts, Houston is a hotspot of warehouses and factories that store and produce these chemicals as by-products and commercial goods. Even with several sources of clean water feeding into and around the area, the quality of water varies drastically throughout Houston proper and its suburbs, with some freshwater streams being perfectly safe and others putting you at risk of cancers and other debilitating medical conditions. As described in this paper, the goal of our proposal is to research and identify the most optimal method that would remove one of these toxic chemicals – benzo[a] pyrene – from Houston waterways.
Firstly, I would like to acknowledge and thank my research partners Joseph Schwartz and Benjamin Peng for their part in developing this proposal. I would also like to thank Jamie Browne, our H2O 101 professor, for giving us the opportunity to research and develop a project that means a great deal to me personally. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Sheryl Welte Emch and the Deliberations Editorial Board for their suggestions and feedback throughout the editing process.
This group would like to thank Dr. Sheryl Welte Emch and the Deliberations editorial board for their many suggestions and the opportunity to share this culmination of research from this semester. We would also like to thank our professor, Jamie Browne, for pushing us at every turn to think as critically as possible and to see all aspects of pollution including activism, health, and conservation; this paper would not have
been possible without her.