Brown Superfund Research Program receives $10.8M grant

A FEDERAL grant of nearly $10.8 million will allow Brown University researchers and students in the Superfund Research Program to continue their research.
A FEDERAL grant of nearly $10.8 million will allow Brown University researchers and students in the Superfund Research Program to continue their research.

PROVIDENCE – Thanks to a federal grant of nearly $10.8 million over the next five years, Brown University researchers and students in the Superfund Research Program will be able to continue their work studying how toxicant exposures affect health, how exposures occur and more.
“There is more research to be performed,” Kim Boekelheide, program director, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, and fellow of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, said in a statement. “Our scientific theme is integrated biomedical and engineering solutions to regulatory uncertainty, using interdisciplinary approaches to attack the really difficult contamination problems that matter.”
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health provided the grant – more than $2.1 million in funding will be available each year.
Four integrated projects are being pursued by the program:

  • Boekelheide’s team is looking at the physiological effects of exposure to toxicants like trichloroethylene on the male reproductive system. Boekelheide hopes to find differences in biomolecular markers in sperm that could allow for very early detection of exposure.
  • Eric Suuberg, professor of engineering, is studying how vapors from toxic material releases can re-emerge from the soil entering into buildings built at or near polluted sites. He also will study why it is difficult to predict the level of exposure that building inhabitants may suffer.
  • Robert Hurt, an IBES fellow, SRP co-primary investigator and professor of engineering, is studying how graphene, an atomically thin carbon material, can be used to block the release and transport of toxicants to prevent human exposures.
  • Hurt is also collaborating with Agnes Kane, an IBES fellow and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, who is leading a study of nanomaterial effects on human health, so they can be designed and used safely in environmental and other applications.

The program will continue its community outreach efforts in which researchers work and share information with communities near the state’s Superfund-designated and Brownfield contaminated sites.
Researchers also will share their findings with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state agencies and professionals involved in contamination management and cleanup.

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