He cares about roads, car tires, and coho salmon

The Edmonds Waterfront Center welcomes Dr. Edward P. Kolodziej, internationally recognized environmental chemist and the Allan and Inger Osberg professor at the University of Washington (Tacoma/Seattle), as the featured speaker in Annie Crawley’s Environmental Speaker Series.

Crawley is an Edmonds resident and award-winning producer, underwater photographer, author, and motivational speaker.

The event, 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11, at the Edmonds Waterfront Center, is the second presentation in the series. Tickets are $7.50. More information: edmondswaterfrontcenter.org.

The first featured Casey McLean, a licensed veterinary nurse and the founding executive director of SR³ – SeaLife Response, Rehabilitation, and Research, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the health and welfare of marine wildlife in the Pacific Northwest.

The series is a community-based science and conservation initiative focused on Puget Sound.

A joint faculty member of UW Tacoma’s Department of Sciences & Mathematics and UW Seattle’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Kolodziej leads a multidisciplinary research team based out of the Center for Urban Waters.

He works with Washington State University-Puyallup and Washington Stormwater Center researchers who have collectively spent decades investigating mysterious and repeated acute mortality events in coho salmon across urbanizing streams in the Puget Sound region.

During his presentation, Kolodziej will explain how researchers connected the dots from unexplained “urban runoff mortality syndrome” to roadside chemical pollution from tire rubbers using mass spectrometry and toxicology studies.

His team pinpointed 6PPD‑quinone, a transformation product of a tire antioxidant used in every major brand of vehicle tires, as the primary cause of coho salmon deaths during rain storms, helping to explain why, where, and how acute mortality events occur in Puget Sound-area streams.

Subsequent global research has showed similar toxicity effects in rainbow trout, brook trout, lake trout, white-spotted char (an Asian salmonid species), and also coastal cutthroat trout, another species commonly using small Puget Sound watersheds.

This research has significant real-world implications, revealing that all vehicle tire rubbers are made using highly toxic chemicals – particularly harmful to salmonids – and that protecting water quality requires careful management of tire wear particles and roadway runoff, especially near sensitive habitats, vulnerable salmonid populations, and small streams impacted by roads.

Collaborative efforts now focus on advocating for “salmon-safe” tire reformulations, improved stormwater management, and local policy measures to stop roadway pollutants from entering vulnerable waterways

Kolodziej was named U.S. National Champion for the 2023 Frontiers Planet Prize in recognition of this breakthrough work in global sustainability science.

Subtitles and closed captioning will be provided for guests who are deaf or hard of hearing. Assistive listening devices are also available to check out or sync with smartphones.

The series continues on Oct. 9 with marine mammalogist Cindy Elliser of the Salish Sea Institute and Pacific Mammal Research, who will present on local cetacean populations and their connection to coastal ecosystem health

The Edmonds Beacon is a sponsor of the Annie Crawley Environmental Speaker Series.