NIEHS Superfund Research Program - Research Brief Podcasts

This month, the Superfund Research Program (SRP) marks an important milestone - Research Brief 200.

Working with key collaborators from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), SRP researcher Dr. Rolf Halden at Arizona State University investigated developmental and immunological effects that might be associated with either chlordane or permethrin exposure.

At the University of Kentucky SRP, a team of engineers and chemists developed a double membrane remediation system to remove chlorinated organic contaminants from groundwater.

Given their huge biomass on the earth, plants likely play an important role in the enantioselective biotransformation and/or translocation of chiral PCBs. By studying the fundamental processes of PCB phytoremediation, Dr. Jerald Schnoor's group at the University of Iowa is establishing the scientific basis for the development and application of land management strategies for intervention at contaminated waste sites.

Dr. Joseph Irudayaraj at Purdue University is developing a novel nanoparticle sensor to better understand the mechanism by which the bacteria Shewanella oneidensis (S. oneidensis) MR-1 is able to reduce Cr(VI) to the less toxic Cr(III).

Isaac Wirgin (New York University School of Medicine) and Mark Hahn (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) collaborated in a series of studies to understand how Atlantic tomcod populations in the Hudson River not only survive in their polluted ecosystem, but also thrive.

Dr. Danny Reible's research group is exploring the concept of combining in situ capping with another contaminant-remediation strategy: electrode-based remediation.

Columbia University scientists hypothesized that the time frame for remediating arsenic-contaminated aquifers via pump-and-treat could be substantially decreased by subsurface additions of chemical amendments.

Dr. Julian Schroeder at the University of California - San Diego has discovered the key to metal accumulation in plants.

Building on her work at the University of Kentucky Superfund Research Program, Dr. Sylvia Daunert has developed a new method for the long-term preservation, storage, and transport of whole-cell sensing systems.

The Furlong research group has successfully identified biomarkers for two quite different OP toxicants with very different exposure scenarios, and has optimized rapid protein target enrichment and mass spectrometric analytical protocols for each.

Since 1995, researchers at the SRP at Boston University (BU) have used Geographic Information System (GIS) data and increasingly sophisticated statistical methods to examine the geographical distribution of disease, which can provide important clues to the origins of the disease. These environmental epidemiological studies are complicated by factors including small sample size for case populations; the fact that disease registries only contain data on where people lived at the time of diagnosis, which may not be the time of exposure; and methodological problems of understanding, estimating and evaluating potential biases.

System-level biochemical modeling is a necessary and powerful tool for health researchers analyzing biochemical pathways of toxicological relevance. Computational models are valuable in demonstrating both the normal functioning of cellular signaling pathways and the nature and magnitude of perturbations when contaminants are introduced into the system. This podcast give the background, advances, and significance of recent work conducted by Dr. Norbert Kaminski, Program Director of Michigan State University SRP, and his team or researchers.

Columbia University researchers have found chronic arsenic exposure to be linked to an increase in the mortality rate in a cohort study of over 12,000 Bangladeshis.