This past week, I was able to attend the Dioxin conference in Florence, Italy. The conference is 30 years old, and it was started for the topic of Dioxins. Over the years, the conference has expanded to cover many more contaminants, but today, it mostly covers everything on persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

I concluded my talk at INEF 2016 with one final question: How do we, as the environmental forensics community, handle the extensive amount of data that we have the capability to collect? This is a problem we need to solve to move the industry forward.

As was discussed in part 4 of the outlooks for Environmental Forensics blog, communication of the result is the most important part of the environmental forensics investigation. The phrase, a picture is worth a thousand words has been used for over a hundred years regarding the notion that an image can provide quick clarity that would take many words to describe.