Superfund Research Program News

The UNC SRP Research Translation Core (RTC), along with the University of Arizona (UA) RTC, recently released several innovative education materials on the bioavailability of arsenic and lead, two of the most common contaminants of concern found at Superfund National Priorities List sites. Both metals can vary in their bioavailability, or the amount of the… Read more »

The UNC SRP’s Research Translation Core, Projects 2 and 4, and several community partners, recently launched the Well Empowered initiative to aid communities around the state of North Carolina who may be impacted by toxic metals in private wells in documenting exposure to these toxicants and developing responses to reduce harmful exposures. Following the Dan River coal ash… Read more »

High school freshmen assess uptake of toxic metals by plants in collaboration with the Biomarker Mass Spectrometry Lab Emily Liu and Sara Zangi, freshman at East Chapel Hill High School, developed an award-winning, hypothesis-driven research project exploring phytoremediation as a method to remove heavy metals from contaminated water, specifically examining the biosorption and rhizofiltration properties of four… Read more »

Eat Fish, Choose Wisely: A Family Guide to Eating Locally Caught Fish in the Triangle is now available to help inform fishermen at Triangle-area waters about local fish consumption advisories.  Creation of the guide began in 2014 in response to concerns from community partners, Lake Crabtree County Park and environmental non-profit Sound Rivers, about people… Read more »

Dr. Damian Shea and his team at North Carolina State University have developed a new passive sampling technology that provides more accurate estimates of chronic exposure to hundreds of bioavailable chemicals in water, as part of the UNC Superfund Research Program’s Project 4. In addition, a new start-up company, Statera, LLC, has been created by… Read more »

October 6, 2015 Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have demonstrated for the first time an association between levels of the toxic metal cadmium in the placenta during pregnancy and increased risk of the mother developing pre-eclampsia. The researchers also examined interactive effects of essential metals selenium and zinc with pre-eclampsia… Read more »

August 27, 2015 Rebecca Fry, PhD, associate professor of environmental sciences and engineering at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been named director of the UNC Superfund Research Program. The program, based in the Gillings School and supported by a $14 million grant from the National… Read more »

August 12, 2015 Rui Yu, PhD, the Leon and Bertha Golberg Postdoctoral Fellow at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been awarded a two-year, $160,000 grant from the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund. Yu’s study, “Identifying the nature of the endogenous aldehydes-induced DNA damage that Fanconi anemia DNA repair pathways counteract,” is being conducted… Read more »

UNC SRP’s RTC science educator Dana Haine, MS was invited to lead a six-hour workshop titled Integrating Epigenetics into your Biology Curriculum for 24 high school science teachers at the July 2015 Environmental Health Sciences Summer Institute hosted by the Texas A&M Health Science Center. Ms. Haine featured the epigenetics research of SRP scientist Rebecca… Read more »