NIEHS Superfund Research Program - Research Brief Podcasts

Since 1995, researchers at the SRP at Boston University (BU) have used Geographic Information System (GIS) data and increasingly sophisticated statistical methods to examine the geographical distribution of disease, which can provide important clues to the origins of the disease. These environmental epidemiological studies are complicated by factors including small sample size for case populations; the fact that disease registries only contain data on where people lived at the time of diagnosis, which may not be the time of exposure; and methodological problems of understanding, estimating and evaluating potential biases.

System-level biochemical modeling is a necessary and powerful tool for health researchers analyzing biochemical pathways of toxicological relevance. Computational models are valuable in demonstrating both the normal functioning of cellular signaling pathways and the nature and magnitude of perturbations when contaminants are introduced into the system. This podcast give the background, advances, and significance of recent work conducted by Dr. Norbert Kaminski, Program Director of Michigan State University SRP, and his team or researchers.

Columbia University researchers have found chronic arsenic exposure to be linked to an increase in the mortality rate in a cohort study of over 12,000 Bangladeshis.