Students visit state lab

Naselle High School students Alan Erickson and Drew Macy visited the Washington State lab last week to learn about the testing process for detecting demoic acid in shellfish.

The boys, along with Calen Thompson, were studying the topic of demoic acid in Mr. Dalton’s health class as part of an environmental health project.

Their project started off as a research paper on what a “red tide” is before they realized that it is actually the level of demoic acid that determines whether a clam season is closed. They also discovered that consumption of shellfish with high levels of demoic acid can lead to short term memory problems. The project was part of Youth Network for Healthy Communities in which the students did a presentation via video conferencing with several other schools and included a panel of professors from the University of Washington.

During their research, they had been in contact with several state workers and were able to arrange a visit with Harold Roark, an environmental chemist at the state lab in Shoreline. From the visit they discovered that this has been an “unusually” quiet year with no outbreaks.