SUMMARY OF THE REMEDIATION TECHNOLOGIES DEVELOPMENT FORUM
IN-PLACE INACTIVATION AND NATURAL ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION TECHNOLOGIES SOIL-METALS ACTION TEAM
CONFERENCE CALL

February 19, 2002
1:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.

On Tuesday, February 19, 2002, the following members of the In-Place Inactivation and Natural Ecological Restoration Technologies (IINERT) Soil-Metals Action Team met in a conference call:

Bill Berti, DuPont Central Research and Development (Action Team Co-Chair)
James Ryan, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Action Team Co-Chair)
Sally Brown, University of Washington
Mark Maddaloni, EPA
Ganga Hettiarachchi, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
Kirk Scheckel, EPA

Michelle Arbogast of Eastern Research Group, Inc., was also present.

THE ACTION TEAM'S MANUSCRIPT

Call participants discussed the manuscript's authorship. Several agreed that the best approach is to list all of the symposium speakers as authors, and to acknowledge others who contributed to the manuscript's compilation. Mark Maddaloni indicated that he was not completely comfortable with being listed as an author, noting that the data he presented were compiled mostly by a group of people at Columbia University. Jim Ryan did not think this was a problem, noting that the manuscript's authors had no intention of claiming ownership over all of the data presented. In fact, he said, it will be made clear that the manuscript is intended simply to offer a summary, and that more detailed individual studies will be published separately by the investigators who were more intimately involved with the studies. Call participants agreed that the following must be done to resolve the authorship issue:

Maddaloni must discuss the issue with the principal investigator at Columbia University.

Ryan must call Stan Casteel to discuss acknowledgments.

Ryan noted that a draft of the manuscript has already been prepared and sent to Action Team members. He asked for comments on it. Call participants discussed the following:

Length. Call participants agreed that the manuscript had to be shortened to make it acceptable for Science. Sally Brown agreed to edit the text and forward it to Ryan.

Focus. The manuscript notes that a wide variety of treatments were used, but the text focuses only on particular phosphorus treatments. Brown asked whether mentioning the other treatments simply confuses the text. Call participants agreed that it is important to give readers an idea of the full extent of studies performed. Efforts will be made to explain, however, why only a select set of treatments are evaluated in the manuscript.

Table 2. Brown said that she is confused by the numbers and text associated with Table 2. The data presented in this table address rat feeding studies performed by Judith Hallfrisch and Rufus Chaney. Ryan said that he will contact them for clarification.

Ryan asked call participants to send him their written comments. Once he receives these, he will revise the text, redistribute a new draft, and set up another IINERT Action Team conference call.