About 140 scientists -- nearly half of them from Western Europe -- are in Lawrence this week for a pesticides symposium at Kansas University.
"It's an international meeting," said Mike Thurman, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence, an adjunct professor at KU and organizer of the symposium.
"The idea is to be pushing at the edge of frontiers of knowledge," he said. "The work itself deals with the identification of different kinds of organic contaminants in the environment. But it's highly technical."
The symposium, titled, "The Chemistry and Fate of Modern Pesticides" will take place today through Thursday at various rooms in the Kansas Union.
Though the event is the seventh such international meeting, this is the first year it has taken place in the United States, Thurman said.
Thurman, who has attended the symposium in past years in Europe, said the conference came to Lawrence after he was asked by an organizing committee to help host it.
"It's an honor, and also it's an opportunity to interact," he said.
Scientists will make about 110 different presentations, he said, including some dealing with ecotoxicology and advanced water quality monitoring programs.
"I don't think there's going to be anything that will be earthshaking in the sense that it will make headlines," he said.
"On the other hand, there's a lot of scientific information that is being passed between the two groups" of American and European scientists, he said.
-- Michael Dekker's phone message number is 832-7187. His e-mail address is mdekker@ljworld.com.
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