Ep.27: Arsenic and Algae with Teresa Chavez-Capilla

The Sargassum Podcast

LINK TO LISTENERS SURVEY: https://forms.gle/cWVDc9ZUDM56mFsG8

Our guest today is Teresa Chavez-Capilla who is an environmental and bioanalytical chemist, working as a post-doc at the University in Bern, Switzerland. She is working in the Soil Science Unit within the Interfaculty Cooperation Project One Health, which looks at the microbial-mediated effects and transformations of different pollutants in the environment, and across the food chain. Her research focuses on the microbial-mediated transformations of arsenic from food in the mammalian gut. She is specialized in studying the metabolism of the arsenic available to humans from the diet, including that in seaweed. Besides her position at the University of Bern, she is part of the coordination team of 500 Women Scientist Bern-Fribourg, an organization aimed to promote women in STEM.

Listen to the episode to hear about:

-Survey announcement (0:35)

-Teresa Chavez-Capilla Introduction (3:43)

-Teresa's impression of sargassum influx in the Tropical Atlantic (4:57)

-What sargassum means to Teresa (6:15)

-Inorganic vs organic arsenic (8:00)

-How much arsenic is in the food we eat (10:01)

-What arsenic does to the human body when ingested (12:54)

-Bioaccumulation and bio modification as related to arsenic (15:27)

-Avoiding arsenic exposure in the food chain (16:51)

-What products we have to test for arsenic levels (19:10)

-Where arsenic in the ocean comes from (22:55)

-Whether arsenic is present in other algae (24:26)

-Organic arsenic sugars and carbohydrates in seaweed (26:06)

-Debrief (28:20)

Episode transcript

Learn more about Teresa Chavez-Capilla:

Twitter

Research gate

ORCiD

Soil Science Research Group

One Health Research Cooperation

500 Women Scientists Bern-Fribourg

Publications

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