health

Providing technical support for community partners

Since early 2021, our community partners have been concerned about proposed changes to the plan for the cleanup of the Duwamish River that was finalized in 2014 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in their Record of Decision (ROD). As our partners work to understand the implications of the proposed changes, the UW SRP Community Engagement and Research Translation Cores have been providing technical support to help interpret the science underlying the proposed actions.

BJ Cummings engages with students at Seattle's new Maritime High School

The UW Superfund Research Program was honored to be invited to speak to students at Seattle's new Maritime High School, which opened in September. This high school is anchored in the Duwamish Valley and has a focus on serving underrepresented students in the Highline School District and surrounding areas. The Maritime High School focuses on research-driven education and is committed to equitable access for all students.

Megumi Matsushita interns with the Washington Department of Health

Lead is famously toxic, especially for children. No amount of lead exposure is safe. It can damage almost every organ and system in the body; it lowers IQ; and it's strongly associated with learning and behavior problems. Many of lead's effects can be irreversible. For all these reasons, reducing exposure to lead, particularly during early childhood, is of enormous public health significance. To this end, public health agencies have an important role to play in designing and implementing effective policies and programs.

Jacqueline Garrick defends her thesis

Dr. Jacqueline Garrick says the most important thing about her dissertation research is the fact that it opened so many doors for future research. Dr. Garrick studies Paraoxonase 2 (PON2), an antioxidative enzyme that's found all over the body in many different tissue types and is in particularly high concentrations in the heart and lungs.

Up until recently, PON2 was understood to be found in the mitochondria and to play a role in protecting cells from oxidative stress.

UW SRP researchers co-develop risk communication with agency partners

When UW SRP researchers found new evidence that environmental contamination from a former smelter may pose a threat to human health, they were careful to inform their agency partners in advance of publication. This advance notice allowed them a chance to coordinate the necessary risk communication before engaging with potentially affected populations.

Community Partners Use UW SRP Video Series to Engage Fishers

In the fall of 2020, our partner community group, Juntos Podemos Ciudar Nuestro Rio Duwamish (Juntos), held a series of three webinars for fishers in Spanish, Vietnamese, and Khmer using videos that we helped create to teach how to safely and legally catch and prepare salmon from the Duwamish River. Because salmon spend only a small portion of their life in the Duwamish River, they are the safest fish to eat from the polluted waterway.