Emphasis
on Fluorinated pollutants
Nonstick cookware and firefighting
foam are miles apart in their purpose, but they have one disquieting
characteristic in common. Both products are made with chemicals that could be
contaminating drinking water and posing a human health hazard.
Fluorinated pollutants, or poly- and
perfluorinated alkyl substances, have been used for more than 60 years in a
variety of items; still, studies of the chemicals are limited and conflicted.
Now the University of Rhode Island
is moving into the forefront of research institutions committed to revealing
more about the pollutants. URI has received an $8 million federal grant to
research how these industrial compounds, also used in rain-proofing fabrics and
food packaging, get into water supplies and harm humans, who are likely to come
in contact with the chemicals daily.
The five-year grant from the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences establishes URI as part of
a national network of Superfund Research Program centers with Rainer Lohmann, a
professor at the Graduate School of Oceanography and an expert in marine
pollutants, as director.
He will lead an interdisciplinary group of scientists and outreach specialists from URI, Harvard University and Silent Spring Institute to generate new insights into these pollutants and distribute information to communities.
Researchers will examine to what
degree groundwater in towns near the Joint Base Cape Cod, Mass., military
training site is contaminated with the chemicals, which were present in
firefighting foam used during training exercises. Residents will be informed of
the findings and, if necessary, steps will be taken to reduce exposure to the
pollutants.
The chemicals have been linked to
kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, colitis and suppression of the
immune system—maladies that lend urgency to the study.
As one of the few national Superfund
Research Program centers in the country, Lohmann says that the new URI-led
center will “work closely with communities and scientists to share our
knowledge and help inform people and agencies about this growing problem. These
fluorinated contaminants are present in the blood of almost every adult in the
United States.”
GSO Dean Bruce Corliss also praised
the project: “Water quality in the United States continues to be one of the
most pressing environmental problems we face. This center will carry out
critical research to better understand the impact of these chemicals and
suggest ways to mitigate the risk of such chemicals.”
The environmental and human health
hazards caused by these chemicals are only beginning to emerge. Although the
chemicals have been produced and used in consumer products for decades, their
ubiquitous presence in human blood and the environment was discovered only
around 2000.
Sources of the chemicals include
landfills, the chemicals’ manufacturers, industrial users of the chemicals, and
airports and fire-training sites that use foam to extinguishes fires. The
chemicals, also known as PFASs, are persistent because they don’t break
down when exposed to air, water or sunlight and can travel long distances,
exposing people and other living things in environments thousands of miles
away.
Researchers will use a wide range of
tools and equipment for their studies, ranging from new detection tools like
water samplers to laboratory experiments with mice, clams and worms that have
been exposed to the chemicals. The project aims to understand how the chemicals
contaminate the groundwater, the food chain and, ultimately, humans.
Working with principal investigator
Lohmann is an interdisciplinary URI team: Geoffrey Bothun, an associate
professor of chemical engineering; Alyson McCann, water quality coordinator of
URI Cooperative Extension; Angela Slitt, associate professor, and Bongsup Cho,
professor, of biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences; and Judith Swift,
professor of communication studies and director of the Coastal Institute, along
with the Institute’s assistant director Nicole Rohr and digital media
specialist Amber Neville.
Lohmann will validate new sampling
approaches for the pollutants and work with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency to examine to what extent worms and clams become contaminated when
exposed to polluted sediment from Cape Cod and possibly Hoosick Falls, a
community in upstate New York whose drinking water was compromised by chemicals
from a plastics plant.
Bothun will explore how the
chemicals travel from blood into human cells; Slitt will explore what the
chemicals do to animals; McCann, working with the Silent Spring Institute, a
nonprofit environmental group, will conduct community outreach with Cape Cod
communities; Cho will lead an intensive training program for graduate and
post-doctoral students working on the project; and Swift, Rohr and Neville will
create videos, brochures, op-eds and other communication material for the
public on Cape Cod and at other contaminated sites throughout the country.
“Our job is to translate the science
into a language the public can understand,” says Swift. “We’re the bridge
between what’s happening in the science world and the public—and others in the
science community.”
Slitt and Bothun will work together
to better understand properties that allow the chemicals to enter cells in the
body. Bothun’s goal is to measure physical and chemical properties of the
chemicals and to study how these properties influence the way they interact
with biological molecules such as proteins and lipids. Scientific findings
about the chemicals are lacking, and conflicted.
Slitt’s goal is to understand how
various PFASs might disrupt the body’s metabolism in ways that can lead to
obesity and to explore whether exposure to the chemicals early in life through
breast feeding is a risk factor for potential adverse health problems, such as
fatty liver disease and disruption of metabolic hormones.
Whether PFASs, which
persist in the human body, are associated with the development of fatty liver disease
in humans is not clear. Slitt will use liver and fat cells from humans to
answer these questions.
“The goal of our project is to
connect findings in human-derived cells and animal models with human clinical
studies being conducted by our collaborators at Harvard to better understand
potential health risks associated with exposure to PFASs,” says Slitt.
Lohmann says the project is a great
example of URI professors and staff working together: “I’m very proud that the
center will train young scholars at URI and Harvard to make the world a
healthier place.”