Environmental Health Professor Richard Clapp and doctoral candidate Madeleine Scammell recently led a workshop in Claremont, New Hampshire, which addressed the need for health studies to address community concerns where toxins may be present. They addressed a possible link between cancer and other medical conditions with regard to exposure to emissions from a solid waste incinerator located in Claremont.  Members of Citizens Leading for Environmental Action and Responsibility (CLEAR) and area clinicians participated in the meeting. Molly Jacobs, a BUSPH (MPH ‘00) also participated in the workshop.  Jacobs works with Clapp at the Environmental Health Initiative at UMASS Lowell's Center for Sustainable Production.

The workshop was organized at CLEAR's request by Toxics Action Center, an organization that assists community groups with environmental health concerns throughout New England and the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice (CHEJ). Both organizations are partners of the Boston University Superfund Basic Research Program's Community Outreach and Research Translation Cores. The Superfund Basic Research Program includes nine basic research programs at BUSPH, BU Charles River Campus and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. All research involves chemicals commonly encountered at Superfund sites. Environmental Health Professor David Ozonoff is the Principal Investigator of the BU Superfund program that is managed by the Department of Environmental Health.

The BU Superfund Basic Research Program, in conjunction with our community partner Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, is pleased to announce our new "Ask the Researcher" page, where Superfund researchers answer questions submitted by you, our readers and members of our community partner organizations.

This month, we'll be featuring Dr. Ann Aschengrau, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her current research looks at whether prenatal and childhood exposures to drinking water contaminated with tetrachloroethylene (PCE) have caused disease in adults living on Cape Cod. She will answer questions on childhood exposures and adult disease, on doing epidemiology, and on other issues pertaining to her research. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for Dr. Aschengrau, read her answers starting in September, and check back in November when we feature Mark Hahn, a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

A new publication from the June 2006 International Journal of Health Geographics by Webster et al. has been added to the Project 2 page. Synthetic data are publicly available as well.

Dr. Ann Aschengrau, PI of SBRP Project 1, contributed an article to the Spring 2006 newsletter of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility. The article, called Drinking Water Detective Story: Researching Connections Between Water Contamination and Disease (page 3 of the pdf file), provides an overview of her research on drinking water contamination on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.