Announcements & Opportunities

Check out a recent interview with Dr. Petros Koutrakis and Jeannette Barnes, a reporter for Cape and Islands (CAI), regarding two new studies of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station.

Harvard Chan NIEHS Center members played a key role in recent federal regulations, which now limit fine particulate air pollution to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air.

For 40 years, Ronnie Levin has been trying to convince the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce lead limits in drinking water. On November 30, she got the welcome news that the agency was proposing strict new rules requiring that 100% of the nation’s lead pipes be replaced within 10 years.

A new study led by Charlie Roscoe, research fellow in environmental health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that nighttime and daytime noise generated by things like cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes was linked with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a group of women in the U.S. Roscoe discusses the significance of the findings, and why the health impacts of noise should be taken seriously.

Dr. Barrak Alahmad, MD, MPH, PhD, is featured in BBC World Service Documentaries series on ‘How hidden oil pollution puts millions at risk in the Gulf’. In September, Dr. Alahmad was awarded the Rebecca James Baker award at ISEE2023 for his work on cardiovascular mortality and migrant workers in the Middle East.

An article titled “Heterogeneous Distributed Lag Models to Estimate Personalized Effects of Maternal Exposures to Air Pollution” by Daniel Mork et al. was selected by the Journal of the American Statistical Associations to be part of its ‘Editor’s Choice Collection.’ The article proposes a new statistical learning framework to estimate the personalized effects of maternal exposure to air pollution during pregnancy on birth and child health outcomes. Using a large administrative dataset, the authors conduct a precision environmental health analysis of the effect of weekly maternal exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution during gestation on birth weight. The approach simultaneous accounts for multiple candidate modifiers to identify who is most sensitive to air pollution exposure and identify windows of sensitivity.

Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, this research compares greenness exposure quantified with traditional residential buffers and novel mobility-based estimates from smartphone GPS to provide a more accurate reflection of greenness exposure among participants within the Nurses’ Health Study 3 and the Mobile Health substudy cohort.

The Superfund Community Engagement Core participated in the annual New England Franklin Park Zoo Howl for Halloween this year. Our booth provided handouts designed by members of our team adapted from Boston’s Annual Water Quality Report. Kids engaged in a modified version of the “Ap’peeling Purifier” experiment, learning about how plants absorb metals, while receiving treats.

A Dorchester community garden 15 years in the making celebrated a ribbon cutting in September. Our Center’s Community Engagement Core assisted in testing the soil and we made recommendations to incorporate raised beds for vegetables and artificial turf for the playground.

Dr. Stefania Papatheodorou was selected by the NIH as one out of seven established scientists with expertise in climate and health to work on the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative,  a cross-cutting NIH effort to reduce health threats from climate change across the lifespan and build health resilience in individuals and communities around the world, especially those at highest risk.

A team of postdocs and staff members visited the Fall Into Good Health Fair hosted by Africatown Plateau Pacers organization and the Mobile County Health Department on Sep 23^rd, 2023. This continues the partnership forged during the April 2023 screening of Netflix documentary ‘Descendant’.

Francine Laden was selected as the recipient of the 2023 International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) John Goldsmith Award, presented at #ISEE2023 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her lecture was titled, “From Six Cities to Nationwide Insights: Exploring Health Impacts of Air Pollution and the External Exposome.”

This article, published in the Dec 2023 issue of Environmental Research, examines patterns of environmental and social exposures at the household-level and potential predictors of these joint exposures in two environmental justice communities in the Greater Boston area – Chelsea, MA and the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, MA between 2016 and 2019.

Titled “Evaluating Neighborhood-Level Differences in Hair Product Safety by Environmental Working Group Ratings among Retailers in Boston, Massachusetts”, Marissa Chan et al. explore the idea of retail redlining, in which neighborhood-level factors, such as socioeconomic status, affect whether residents have equitable access to safe personal care products, in this article published in the Sept 2023 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

 Headlines about the health of American football players have largely focused on the potential link between head injuries and neurodegenerative diseases—in particular, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a serious disease with no cure that causes cognitive and mood problems. While CTE in football players is certainly an important issue, the attention on one specific disease may be hindering the treatment of other conditions like cardiovascular disease, Weisskopf said at an August 8 “Hot Topics” seminar organized by the Office of Educational Programs.

Center Director Marc Weisskopf tells STAT that the study could provide guidance for public health interventions during a time of marked increases in wildfires in the U.S. “If there are ways to keep people away from the smoke when it happens, then that would lessen the impact on dementia,” he said.

Our Center has partnered with Biogen to award pilot project funding for a proposal that will investigate whether and how exposure to specific greenspaces may mitigate health inequities in the relationships between air pollution, extreme temperature events, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Several of our members were quoted in recent articles on the Canadian wildfires. Joseph Allen and Francesca Dominici were quoted in a Harvard Gazette article entitled “In the thick of it.”  They predict that more fires are likely to occur in future years and offer suggestions on how to minimize the health risks by taking measures to filter indoor air.  Petros Koutrakis was quoted in a Boston Globe article entitled “Here’s what experts say about the hazy skies and air quality right now”.

Senior author Andrea Roberts and Marc Weisskopf were among the authors of a study published in Jama Network entitled “Multidimensional sleep health prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection and risk of post-Covid-19 condition”. The researchers assessed the sleep health of women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II who tested positive for COVID-19 between April 2020 and November 2021. Each participant’s sleep health—which they reported on both before and during the pandemic—was given a score from zero (least healthy) to five (most healthy). Scores were based on factors like sleep duration (hours slept per night) and quality (including experiences such as insomnia, snoring, or daytime dysfunction).

On June 2, the HSPH-NIEHS Center hosted its 2023 Center Retreat at the Weld Hill Research Building, Arnold Arboretum. We evaluated strengths and weaknesses of the Center, identified priorities for the upcoming renewal, and discussed creative and useful approaches to community engagement.

An article titled “Reducing phtalates in beauty products may lower health risks, disparities” featured an interview with Dr. Tamarra James-Todd in which she discussed how the use of certain personal care products may affect pregnancy outcomes and breast cancer risk. The NIEHS grantee explained the health and environmental justice implications of products containing endocrine disruptors during a March 26 webinar hosted by the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition.

CEC Director Gary Adamkiewicz was selected as the recipient for the 2023 Teaching Citation Award, given by the Harvard T.H. Chan School to an instructor who has demonstrated excellence in teaching, as characterized by commitment, preparation, quality of presentation, time for questions, and other factors related to instruction. Awards are based on student course evaluations, particularly questions that assess teaching quality and teaching effectiveness.

Marc Weisskopf, director of the Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health and co-director of the JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program, spoke on May 11 at the MIT Picower Institute’s Spring Symposium. Co-sponsored by the JPB Foundation, the symposium centered around Environmental and Social Determinants of Child Mental Health, and featured talks by neuroscientists, policy experts, physicians, educators and activists about how experiences and biology work together to affect how minds develop and what can be accomplished in helping people overcome early disadvantages. Dr. Weisskopf presented on “Environmental Epidemiology: Neurodevelopment and Multigenerational Exposures”; Research Associate Ran Rotem presented on “Environmental Epidemiology and Big Data: Using Electronic Medical Records to Explore Biological Mechanisms Linking Environmental Exposures and Autism.”

Our Center hosted a film screening of ‘Descendant’, a Netflix documentary film that follows the descendants of the survivors of the last known slave ship to transport human beings as cargo from Africa to America, followed by a panel discussion with members from the Africatown community in Mobile, Alabama.

A study published in the BMJ in April 2023 led by Center Director Marc Weisskopf, in partnership with Biogen, found that exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) may increase the risk of developing dementia. This study is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to use the new Risk of Bias In Non-Randomized Studies of Exposure (ROBINS-E) tool, which addresses bias in environmental studies in greater detail than other assessment approaches. It also is the first to include newer studies that used “active case ascertainment,” a method that involved screening of entire study populations followed by in-person evaluation for dementia among individuals who did not have dementia at baseline.

The new research, published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that tightening the limit on fine particulate matter by 4 micrograms per cubic meter of air would result in a 4 percent reduction in the mortality rate for higher-income white adults. The same change would result in a reduction of 6 percent to 7 percent for higher-income Black adults, lower-income white adults and lower-income Black adults. The new research could inform a crucial Environmental Protection Agency decision to tighten limits on fine particulate matter.

A new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology applied distributed lag models to fetal growth ultrasound data and identified critical exposure windows to traffic-related air pollution. Listed authors included Michael Leung, Stefania Papatheodorou and others. Published in American Journal of Epidemiology, 24 March 2023. 

A new study from the Environmental Reproductive Justice Lab, led by Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, found that lower birth weight-for-gestational age (BW-for-GA) was reported among hair product users, with the strongest association observed for daily hair oil use. Use of liquid soaps, shampoos, conditioners were associated with longer infant length.  Published in Environmental Research, Volume 225, May 2023. 

The results will be formally announced at the next Assembly Membership Meeting during the ATS Conference in May 2023.

The ViCTER (Virtual Consortium for Translational/Transdisciplinary Environmental Research) program brings together diverse research teams that may include scientists who develop technologies, conduct basic mechanistic or population-based studies, and those that are clinical and patient-oriented. Dr. Mazumdar’s project establishes a new consortium to understand how arsenic and micronutrients affect the epigenome to influence spina bifida risk.

A new study from found that gestational exposure to particle radioactivity was associated with fetal growth in Eastern Massachusetts. Published in Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, January 2023. 

A new study found that office workers who wore silicone wristbands in their office buildings for 4 workdays as a way to collect the chemical ‘cocktail’ they were each exposed to showed the average person was exposed to at least 800 different chemical signatures. Additionally, the study found that many of the chemical mixtures disrupted estrogen, androgen, and thyroid hormone receptors. Exposures were influenced by personal care products, buildings, and gender disparities. Published in Chemosphere, February 2023. 

Our Center’s CEC Director Gary Adamkiewicz, an associate professor of environmental health and exposure disparities who has studied potential health harms in public housing for almost 11 years, was quoted in the article in Inside Climate News urging officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to consider swapping out gas stoves for electric ones when renovating public housing.

Our Center partnered with the Office of Communications to host “Climate and Justice: The EPA’s action plan” in The Studio on Dec. 14 with featured speaker David Cash, USEPA Region 1 Administrator. Moderated by Drs. Marc Weisskopf and Tamarra James-Todd, Dr. Cash spoke about his past life as a middle school science teacher, ongoing priorities for the Biden Administration, and the EPA’s new Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

New study by Dr. Stefania Papatheodorou and team suggests higher temperatures are associated with in-utero fetal growth with brain parameters being particularly vulnerable. Published in International Journal of Epidemiology.

The #EnvRacBoston project, an interactive web resource that outlines the history of environmental racism in greater Boston, as well as efforts to promote environmental justice in the area, was selected as Runner Up in the Humanitarian and Social Justice category of the 2022 ArcGIS StoryMaps Challenge.

Congratulations to Francine Laden, the 2022 recipient of the Marianne Wessling Resnick Memorial Mentoring Award given annually to recognize members of the Harvard Chan School community who have significantly contributed to the advancement of women faculty and researchers at the School. This award will be presented on Thursday, November 17th, at the 2022 Alice Hamilton Award Ceremony.

Congratulations to Tamarra James-Todd who will receive the 12th Annual Alice Hamilton Award from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This award by the Committee on the Advancement of Women Faculty (CAWF) recognizes an especially promising tenure-track woman investigator in public health whose work has already made a significant impact and who demonstrates exceptional future promise. This award is named for Alice Hamilton, the first woman to be appointed to the faculty at Harvard University. Tamarra will receive this award and present a lecture on Nov. 17 from 2-4pm in the Kresge Cafeteria.

Dr. Joseph Allen, associate professor for exposure assessment science and director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was a guest panelist at the first White House Summit on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ). The summit underlined the relevance of IAQ for public health and human well-being.

The St. Louis Baby Tooth Study has been reimagined. Using the original teeth collected from the children of the 1950s and 1960s Marc Weisskopf and his colleagues at Harvard are seeking to find new answers from old teeth.

This study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that neighborhood socioeconomic disparities were associated with childhood asthma and wheeze. Black and Hispanic children in all neighborhoods had higher asthma risk compared with White children.

This trial, funded initially by a flash funding grant awarded at our 2016 Center retreat, has produced two papers – one of which has been highlighted in the May NIEHS Environmental Factor Newsletter as a paper of the month. The study found that a solar lighting intervention reduced exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon in rural Uganda. This is the first randomized study to examine whether solar lighting displaces fuel-based options and reduces exposure to harmful substances.

The study, published in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Frontotemporal Degeneration, found results that suggest that lead exposure prior to onset of ALS is associated with shorter survival following onset of ALS, and this association is independent of other prognostic factors.

 The Superfund Research Center Community Engagement Core in Boston attended Franklin Park Zoo’s annual Party for the Planet where Harvard Chan School students, post-docs and NIEHS Center staff provided an interactive booth about water safety and filtration.

Center Director Marc Weisskopf gave a talk titled “Air Pollution Effects on the Central Nervous System’ at the Collège de France on April 13.

Adjunct Professor of Environmental Health Philippe Grandjean and a team of researchers calculated benchmark dose (BMD) results based on the results from two North American prospective studies of prenatal fluoride exposure and childhood cognition. The manuscript was accepted in June last year, and the print version became available April 18, 2022 in Risk Analysis Volume 42, Issue 3, pp 439-449. The BMD results suggest that water fluoridation exceeds the exposure that causes a decline in IQ of at least 1 point.

Congratulations to Joe Allen and his team who received a $3 million gift from the Login5 Foundation for their work on the Co-Benefits of Built Environment Research (CoBe).

This visiting professorship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Women’s Health brings in renowned leaders in women’s health to present to, and discuss with, medical staff the most significant and recent advances in women’s health. Dr. James-Todd gave the lecture entitled “Environmental Justice and Women’s Health: A Novel Lens for Understanding Reproductive Health Disparities Across the Life Course” on April 22, 2022.

Guided by Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science Joseph Allen, the challenge is part of the Biden Administration’s National COVID-19 Preparedness Plan and calls for leaders and building operators to assess their indoor air quality and make ventilation and air filtration a top priority in protecting the health of their occupants.

A new paper titled “Associations of short-term exposure to air pollution and increased ambient temperature with psychiatric hospital admissions in older adults in the USA: a case-crossover study” published in The Lancet Planetary Health found that in the US Medicare population, short-term exposure to elevated concentrations of PM_2·5 , NO₂ and cold season ambient temperature increase were significantly associated with an increased risk of hospital admissions for psychiatric disorders (including depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders). Considering the increasing burden of psychiatric disorders in the US population, these findings suggest that intervening on air pollution and ambient temperature levels through stricter environmental regulations or climate mitigation could help ease the psychiatric healthcare burden. The paper was authored by Xinye Qiu, Mahdieh Danesh-Yazdi, Yaguang Wei, Qian Di, Allan Just, Antonella Zanobetti, Marc Weisskopf, Francesca Dominici, and Joel Schwartz.

Zac Nagel was awarded a Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society for his grant proposal entitled “Role of translesion polymerases in temozolomide resistance in glioblastoma”.

Philippe Grandjean was given an honorary doctoral degree at Ku Leuven, Belgium’s oldest and largest university established in 1425.

Elderly people living near or downwind of unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD)—which involves extraction methods including directional (non-vertical) drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking—are at higher risk of early death compared with elderly individuals who don’t live near such operations, according to a large new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The award is the highest honor given by the Boston Chapter of the American Statistical Association. It honors the legacy of Fred Mosteller, and is given to a distinguished statistician who has made both exceptional contributions to the field of statistics and outstanding service to the statistical community.

Certain groups in the U.S.—Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Latinos, and low-income populations—are being exposed to higher levels of dangerous fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) than other groups, according to new research from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Of 3,942 publications by NIEHS researchers and grantees in 2021, institute leaders selected 35 as Papers of the Year.

As emissions fell over a decade, the number of deaths attributable to air pollution dropped by thousands, yielding billions of dollars in societal benefits

Our Center, along with affiliated NIEHS centers at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and UCSF, hosted a virtual two-day boot camp in August that gathered researchers from across the country to discuss the foundations of environmental justice research, uncover the roots of environmental health disparities, and highlight real-world solutions. This session was co-directed by Dr. Tamarra James-Todd. The Center sponsored 12 students.

The Harvard Chan-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health is collaborating with Biogen to investigate the growing body of research that links air pollution and brain health. The Center is conducting a meta-analysis of the scientific literature that has proliferated significantly within the past two years.

Tamarra James-Todd has been promoted to Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Americans spend 90 percent of our lives indoors. You take 6,000 breaths in your workplace on an average day.” In an op-ed for The Atlantic Magazine, Harvard Chan School’s Joseph Allen makes the case for clean air in offices.

This award recognizes a mid-term career scientist for their scientific contributions to the field of environmental epidemiology as well as their commitment to, and demonstration of, exceptional mentoring.

Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology, was appointed in June as a member of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the Slave Route Project: Resistance, Liberty, Heritage, in recognition of her work on the consequences of racism and discrimination. She also was recognized by the American Journal of Epidemiology, which named her article “Cancer Stage at Diagnosis, Historical Redlining, and Current Neighborhood Characteristics: Breast, Cervical, Lung, and Colorectal Cancers, Massachusetts, 2001–2015” one of the 10 best of 2020.

Center Director Marc Weisskopf delivered his presentation during a webinar (Feb 23-24, 2021) hosted by the Center for Global Health Delivery, the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Global Health Institute. A panel of engineers and epidemiologists invested in planetary health, which focuses on the constitutive nature of human health and the environmental systems on which humans depend, discussed the production of fine airborne particles and pollution, and the epidemiological and health effects that these exposures may produce.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Peter James speaks with Martha Bebinger, NPR Weekend Edition Saturday, about how trees could be a mental, physical, and climate change antidote.

The Harvard Medical Grand Rounds, held Sept. 8, 2021, focused on: “Fossil Fuel Pollution and the Climate Crisis: Patients, Practice, and Policy.” HMD Assistant Professor of Medicine and Center Member Mary Rice, MD, MPH, was one of the speakers, alongside Secretary John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

We’d like you to meet Assistant Professor of Nutritional and Planetary Health Chris Golden, MPH, PhD. Below, we ask Chris about his research working with populations in Madagascar and the South Pacific, how he got started in this field, and what he does when he’s not at work.

Our Center’s Organic Chemicals Research Core Director Tamarra James-Todd, Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Environmental Reproductive and Perinatal Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discussed her background and research in an April 1, 2021, Q&A on the Environmental Health Defense Fund Health blog.

The Fairmount Greenway Task Force has been awarded a pilot project of $30,000 for the research and development phase of an art project designed to raise awareness in the Boston metropolitan area of the impact of heat on health. The art project – Heat Island Art – will consist of fabricated trees, or groves of trees, with leaves made from nitinol, a heat-sensitive “smart material.” Visitors to Heat Island Art, when installed will be able to appreciate how a tree canopy cools the local space.

New inventory of air pollution impacts from stationary sources over past decade shows trend may continue

A new study finds that burning natural gas, biomass, and wood now have more negative health impacts than burning coal in many states, and is a trend that may continue. The study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published in Environmental Research Letters is the first to provide an inventory of the health impacts of each type of fuel burned at stationary sources from 2008-2017, based on available data.

The paper, titled “In well-differentiated primary human bronchial epithelial cells, TGF-β1 and TGF-β2 induce expression of furin,” was recently published by the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.

Center Member Nancy Krieger and colleagues are utilizing their Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project to “document inequities in the population distribution of COVID-19.” They make methods, data, & code freely available for analyses.

Read David Christiani’s editorial (+audio interview) in The New England Journal of Medicine on the epidemic of vaping by young people and related severe lung injuries.

Center Director Marc Weisskopf led a new research comparing the health of athletes in the National Football League and Major League Baseball. The study looked at 6,000 athletes between the years of 1979 and 2013. During that period, there were 517 deaths among NFL players and 431 deaths among MLB players, translating into a 26% higher mortality rate among football players compared with baseball players. The findings showed that while NFL players died of neurodegenerative diseases at a higher rate than MLB players, both groups of athletes were more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than brain diseases.

Many of the hair relaxing and straightening products primarily used by black women and children contain hormone-disrupting chemicals associated with early puberty, preterm birth, and reproductive diseases, according to a recent study published in Environmental Research. Tamarra James-Todd, Mark and Catherine Winkler Assistant Professor of Environmental Reproductive and Perinatal Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who previously studied the potential health risks of chemicals in hair products, shared product information with the researchers.

Twenty-five years ago, the Harvard Six Cities Study drew a strong link between exposure to fine particulate air pollution and increased risk of early death in six U.S. cities. Last year, another Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health study using new technologies and innovations in statistical analysis drew the same main conclusion.