Matthew Hayden, a senior at Hamilton College, will present his paper, "Cemeteries as Sources of Groundwater Contaminants," at the 1996 Northeastern Section Meeting of the Geological Society of America.

The meeting will take place in Buffalo on Thursday, March 21.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, fluids used for embalming commonly contained mixtures of arsenic, zinc, mercury and lead. Hayden's research included sampling and analyzing groundwater and soil samples from a cemetery located at Hamilton College, which contains at least 68 graves from before 1910. Hayden, a geology major at Hamilton, also installed upgradient and downgradient wells near the cemetery and periodically sampled for metals.

An independent, highly selective, liberal arts college, Hamilton was founded in 1812 and is today among the oldest colleges in the U.S. It is named for Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, and features a strong curriculum in the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences and the social sciences.