The Water Quality Centre (WQC) is dedicated to the development and application of innovative new techniques for the analysis of organic and inorganic contaminants at the isotopic, elemental and molecular scale. The WQC is a multidisciplinary facility that utilizes state-of-the-art instrumentation. The focus of the Centre is the determination of trace quantities of inorganic and organic substances found in aquatic environments. Biological material, sediments, soils, fly ash, industrial by-products, and municipal wastewaters are also investigated with respect to their potential impact on the water quality.

The WQC houses a variety of different mass spectrometers, giving researchers the opportunity to carry out many different kinds of investigations in a single centre, a feature that is unique to the Centre. Chemists, environmental scientists, botanists, biologists, geologists and anthropologists work side by side creating interdisciplinary interaction leading ultimately to the generation of an innovation pool. Numerous peer-reviewed papers have resulted from data generated in the Centre in recent years. Graduate students, post doctoral fellows and scientists from other institutes all over the world use the Centre. The WQC also offers specialty analytical services to researchers and private companies.

Research areas include cycling of trace metals in lakes and catchments, source partitioning of mercury input into lakes, innovative methods to measure radioactive elements at ambient levels, the release of pharmaceuticals from waste treatment facilities, analysis of proteomes, metal(oid) speciation analysis and isotope ratio determinations.

In total, researchers at the Water Quality Centre have been successful in winning four major Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) awards, lleading to the acquisition of 15 mass spectrometers during the past decade.

If you are interested in collaboration or analytical services, please contact us.