Jessica Laine was recently awarded a KC Donnelly Externship from the NIEHS Supefund Research Program. Laine is a doctoral student in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina under the direction of Rebecca Fry, Ph.D., and David Richardson, Ph.D. For her externship, Laine will work with Mary Gamble, Ph.D., at the Columbia University SRP Center.... Read more »
Cancer is a major human health risk associated with exposure to many toxic chemicals, including those commonly encountered at Superfund sites such as polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. UNC SRP investigator James Swenberg, PhD, his Project 1 research team, along with the SRP Chemistry and Analytical Core, collaborated with the National Toxicology Program (NTP) to investigate the formation of DNA adducts... Read more »
Dr. Rebecca Fry of the Gillings School was named co-principal investigator on the UNC ECHO grant, for which UNC was awarded $5 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate how exposure to environmental factors in early development can influence the health of children and adolescents.
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.
