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Public Service

Well Said: Hurricanes and water quality

Once hurricanes subsides and waters return to their normal height, another risk lurks: pollutants in the watershed. Carolina researcher Hans Paerl has spent decades understanding the environmental side effects of the powerful storms.

Whenever a hurricane hits, the big story is how the storm has impacted people and towns with flooding and storm surges.

But the storms also leave behind a quieter and long-term danger: pollutants in the watershed that could poison people and kill fish.

In this week’s episode, we talk about how hurricanes impact water quality with Hans Paerl, the Kenan Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences.

Read a transcript of this episode.

Join us every Wednesday for the University’s podcast as we talk with Carolina’s newsmakers and experts. Each episode, students, faculty, staff and alumni will discuss what’s going on in classrooms, labs and around campus, and how it pertains to the local, national and international headlines.