Tuesday October 13th, 2020

When a wildfire breaks out public health recommendations are to stay indoors and close all windows, but is that the best advice? Toxicology researchers at Oregon State University are very interested in understanding the effect of wildfires on indoor and outdoor air quality. Dr. Kim Anderson and her team have been collecting samples before, during and after wildfires in the Pacific Northwest using community-engaged research for the last three years to help improve public health recommendations.

Tuesday September 18th, 2018

In August, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers asked the Community Engagement Core at Oregon State University’s Superfund Research Center to give a fireside chat about mercury to 35 campers at the Pine Meadows Campground which is on the shores of the Cottage Grove Reservoir. This recreational area is about 35 miles southeast of Eugene, and about 10 miles downstream of the abandoned Black Butte mine which was one of the largest mercury mines in the state in operation from the 1880s until the 1960s. Barbara Hudson-Hanley, a public health doctoral student, gave a short talk describing how mercury can move through the environment, bioaccumulate in fish, and affect human health and then led the campers through two activities.

 

Tuesday May 29th, 2018

Dr. Diana Rohlman (Research Translation Core) was invited to speak at the 2018 Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists Annual National Disaster Epidemiology Workshop in Atlanta, GA.

She discussed her collaborative work with Dr. Kim Anderson in designing a disaster response IRB, allowing rapid response in the event of a disaster. This IRB was activated following Hurricane Harvey, and shared with the University of Texas – Houston, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas A&M, allowing those three schools to receive disaster-specific IRBs as well. In addition, Dr. Rohlman highlighted the on-going work being done in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, using the passive wristband samplersDr. Kim Anderson is working with Baylor College of Medicine and UT-Houston to collect information from over 200 individuals living in the Houston area that were impacted by the extreme flooding. A total of 13 Superfund sites were flooded. Dr. Anderson’s analytic methods can detect up to 1,550 different chemicals in the wristband. This information will be reported back to the impacted communities, and is hoped to provide important information for future disasters to prevent or mitigate chemical exposures.

Tuesday May 29th, 2018

The Research Translation Core, represented by Dr. Diana Rohlman, was invited to attend and present at the 14th summit of the Northwest Toxic Communities Coalition. Dr. Rohlman’s talk highlighted the innovative tools, methodologies and approaches used by the Superfund Research Program at Oregon State. One of the presented case studies highlighted the work being done at the Portland Harbor Superfund site. More information  can be found here.

Saturday March 31st, 2018

The article, “Environmental and individual PAH exposures near rural natural gas extraction” was recently published online. It isn’t uncommon for our researchers to publish the results of their work in scholarly journals. You can see we have been busily writing articles for years! This article however, is somewhat special. When we began this work, we committed to returning all the data, both environmental air sampling data and personal wristband sampling, back to the participants. That’s a big undertaking. We didn’t want to just hand over confusing charts and color-coded Excel files; we wanted to provide data that was useful and relevant to people. It’s important to us that we get it right. We’ve held focus groups and worked with community liaisons to figure out how we can do just that.

Monday June 5th, 2017

Native Americans have a long history of being under-represented in higher education. Currently, only 5% of Native American high school graduates go directly into a four-year college and a small percentage of those major in STEM-related degrees. In an effort to increase participation of Native American students in college programs, and introduce them to biomedical sciences, Oregon State Superfund Research Center holds several activities to bring Native Youth to campus to increase their awareness of opportunities in College and scientific careers.

Friday August 19th, 2016

Sydelle Harrison was awarded an SRP Externship to work with the Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation). The clinic is celebrating 20 years of self-governance this month and preparing to move into a new state of the art facility next year.

Wednesday May 25th, 2016

Working with the RTC, SRP trainee Sydelle Harrison coordinated a campus visit for students from the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) on May 13-14. Students went on a campus tour, ate lunch at the Eena Haws Native American Longhouse Annual Salmon Bake, and met with Dr. Rohlman (CEC, RTC) to learn about recent tribal-university collaborations (more information available here). The tour culminated in a hands-on lab activity wherein students learned how to isolate DNA from strawberries as a proxy for understanding how SRP investigators can learn underlying genetic determinants of disease by analyzing DNA. This event was a collaborative effort between the Research Translation Core, Training Core, Administrative Core and Community Engagement Core.

Posted in: Science Education
Friday January 29th, 2016

Dr. Staci Simonich, Project 5 Leader with the OSU Superfund Research Program

Dr. Staci Simonich, Project 5 Leader with the OSU Superfund Research Program

Posted in: Science Education
Friday April 24th, 2015

Blair Paulik and Jamie Minick, both SRP Trainees working on their PhDs in Dr. Kim Anderson’s lab (Project 4), traveled to McNary High School in the Salem, OR area on April 10th to teach students about environmental pollution.

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