Center Updates

Ken Burkhart was recently awarded the Mary Cline undergraduate Research Award which will provide $1000 for him to continue the research he does with UW SRP co-principal investigator, Jim Gawel. Burkhart and Gawel are researchers on Project 4 which tracks arsenic in the water column and food chain of shallow lakes near Tacoma Washington that were contaminated by the now-defunct ASARCO smelter.


For adults, learning and memory formation depend on the production of new neurons in the part of the brain known as the hippocampus. New work by Dr. Hao Wang, a trainee in the lab of Dr. Zhengui Xia, shows that cadmium exposure not only impairs new neurons in the hippocampus from forming and maturing, but it also causes the death of the stem cells that produce them.


The UW Superfund Research Program is participating in a newly formed "Healthy Seafood Consumption Consortium" for the Duwamish Waterway Superfund Site. Hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the consortium is comprised of non-profit, community, agency, and academic partners interested in contributing to efforts to promote healthy seafood consumption among people harvesting fish and shellfish from the polluted Duwamish River.


UW SRP is delighted to announce the hire of BJ Cummings to take over management of Community Engagement under the direction of Tom Burbacher, Director of Community Engagement and Research Translation. Cummings has a long and illustrious history of engaging communities to advocate for better environmental health in the Duwamish River Valley.


Anyone who spends time in or near freshwater lakes is probably familiar with the fuzzy green algae that coats most surfaces where light reaches. This common algae is called periphyton and, although seemingly harmless, it recently surprised Dr. James Gawel and Dr. Rebecca Neumann by containing high levels of arsenic in the lakes that they study.

 


In late June, Dr. Judit Marsillach of Project Three will travel to Winston-Salem, North Carolina to join an interdisciplinary team of early career biologists and computer scientists to work on issues related to rural health.

In March, Marsillach noticed an announcement for the 2019 Data Science Innovation Lab in the Superfund Research Program’s e-Posted Notes. She applied and was delighted to find out recently that she had been accepted. Now she has her tickets, her green program tee-shirt, and is eager to meet the rest of her team.


Members of the Northwest Toxic Communities Coalition (NWTCC) started their 2019 summit meeting and reconnecting over coffee and pastries and ended it with a penne feast, having covered a myriad of topics from the effects of contaminants on cognitive development, to methods for detoxifying the body, improved solid waste disposal, mushrooms that clean soils, and houseplants that clean air.


On March 14th the University of Washington (UW) Superfund Research Program (SRP) co-sponsored a campus visit with Isabel Carrera Zamanillo of the UW College of the Environment for twenty members of the



             Members of the public packed the C & P Coffee Company’s West Seattle coffee shop on December 6th to hear Dr. Clement Furlong talk about his research on Paraoxonase 1 (PON 1) and what recent findings might mean for the conservation of Puget Sound Killer Whales.


            On November 6, 2018, Lisa Hayward Watts attended a public meeting of Governor Inslee’s Southern Resident Orca Task Force (Orca Task Force) to translate research results from two UW SRP projects that have implications for orca conservation.


            The primary goal of the environmental justice movement is to involve all people in the process of developing, implementing and enforcing environmental law so that everyone receives equitable protection.