NIH Grants Professor $2.2 Million for Study of Effects of Exposure to Petrochemicals on Youth
The
National Institutes of Health recently awarded David
Christiani, professor of occupational medicine and epidemiology and
director of the Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety
and Health, more than $2 million dollars for a five-year study of the
relationships between environmental exposures to petrochemicals and disease
in Taiwanese children and young adults.
The collaborative effort by investigators at HSPH and the Kaohsiung Medical University in Taiwan was launched in Kaohsiung on November 4. The agreement marks a new phase in cooperative research and training between HSPH and Taiwanese occupational and environmental health professionals. The groups have worked together for several years.
Initiated in 1968, Taiwan's petrochemical industry became the twelfth largest in the world over the next 15 years, producing some byproducts known or suspected to be carcinogens. Preliminary environmental data revealed that Taiwanese petrochemical plants released compounds into surrounding communities at concentrations 10 to 12 times higher than those measured in similar studies in New Jersey.
Two of Christiani's colleagues at Kaohsiung Medical University have reported higher-than-normal mortality rates from brain tumors in children living near the plants.
The new study will investigate possible associations between chemical exposures and brain tumors and leukemia, which is known to occur after benzene exposure. In addition, the relationship between genetics and environmentally related diseases will be studied.
Other HSPH researchers involved are Thomas
Smith, professor of industrial hygiene, and Louise
Ryan, professor of biostatistics.
