UPDATE, SEPTEMBER, 2006: Please note that after 16 years of service on the faculty of HSPH, most recently as Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, on 9/1/06 Dr. Hu transitioned to Adjunct status at HSPH and assumed the position of Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and Professor of Environmental Health, Epidemiology, and Medicine at the University of Michigan Schools of Public Health and Medicine. With a number of colleagues at HSPH and the Channing Laboratory, Dr. Hu will continue to conduct research at HSPH and participate in the training of HSPH students and fellows. He can be best reached through email: howardhu@umich.edu **

Dr. Hu trained in internal medicine (Boston City Hospital), Occupational/Environmental Medicine (HSPH), and Epidemiology (HSPH).

RESEARCH

Dr. Hu founded (in 1991) and Co-directs (with Dr. Robert Wright) the Michigan-Harvard/Harvard-Michigan Metals Epidemiology Research Group (MERG; website: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/merg/), which, with support from NIH, the EPA, and other granting agencies, has been conducting multi-disciplinary human population studies around the world on the health effects of general environmental and occupational exposures to lead, manganese, mercury, arsenic, cadmium and other heavy metals. An early MERG advance was the development and application of a special instrument, called K-X-ray fluorescence (KXRF), for the safe and accurate measurement of skeletal lead levels in human subjects. KXRF measured bone lead levels have proven to be a valuable new biological marker of chronic lead accumulation that, when applied in epidemiologic studies, has resulted in new insights into the long-term consequences of lead exposure. For example, in recent studies, MERG has found that bone stores of lead confer an elevated risk of (1) developing hypertension, kidney dysfunction, accelerated declines in cognition, and cataracts among community-exposed middle-aged men and women; (2) among pregnant women, having babies with lower birth weight infants, shorter head circumferences, shorter birth lengths, and, by age 2, lower cognitive developmental scores.

With regards to the latter (the mobilization of bone lead stores in pregnant women leading to fetal toxicity), MERG research has led to an on-going intervention study--- a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of calcium supplementation to prevent the tranfer of lead from mother to fetus.

MERG is also studying the potential risk that bone lead levels pose for the development of cognitive impairments, Parkinson's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease, as well as the potential for specific genetic polymorphisms (traits) to modify individual risk.

Dr. Hu also Co-directs (with Dr. Joseph Brain) the Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research at HSPH (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/niehs/children ), which began in 2004 with support from NIEHS and the EPA. The Center's them is "Metal Mixtures and Children's Health", and has four integrated human and experimental animal research projects supported by four cores that are focused on assessing health risks associated mining waste at the Tar Creek Superfund Site in Oklahoma.

Dr. Hu is also directing or involved in investigations of "multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome" (MCS; aka "idiopathic environmental intolerances"), a poorly-understood condition involving a constellation of relatively disabling symptoms that may be related to environmental toxin exposures. One investigation has entailed the application of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a brain imaging technique, in an effort to determine whether, in comparison to normal controls, subjects with MCS have altered brain function. Given the increasing numbers of patients who complain of these types of symptoms, Dr. Hu and colleagues are interested in doing more research in this area; however, little governmental or non-governmental funding yet exists for this type of research.

TEACHING

(As of 9/1/06, Dr. Hu has been at the University of Michigan).

SERVICE

(As of 9/1/06, Dr. Hu has been at the University of Michigan).

In terms of Naitonal Service, Dr. Hu was, in 1998, the founding Medical Editor of ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES, the official journal of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and since 2004 has continued as Associate Medical Editor.

AWARDS

The 1994 Will Solimene Award of Excellence, American Medical Writers Association (shared with his co-editors for: Chivian E, McCally M, Hu H, Haines H, eds. Critical Condition: Human Health and the Environment. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1993), the 1997 Alice Hamilton Lectureship at the University of California at San Francisco, the 1998 First Prize for Best Infant Nutrition Research from the Instituto Danone of Mexico, the 1998-1999 NIEHS Scientific Advance of the Year, the 2000 Hoopes prize for mentorship of environmental research, a Senior United States Faculty Fulbright Award for work as a scholar in India 2000-2001; the 2005 Adolph Kammer Merit in Authorship Award from the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine; and the 2006 Harriet Hardy Award from the New England College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (to be presented in December, 2006).

Sc.D., 1990, Harvard School of Public Health
M.P.H., 1982
M.S., 1986, Harvard School of Public Health
M.D., 1982, Albert Einstein College of Medicine