Project Summary (2000-2005)

The goal of this project is to apply biomarkers of exposures and outcomes that have been developed in the Superfund Basic Research Program at UC-Davis to human populations with likely exposures to hazardous substances to provide laboratory/biologic assessment of exposures and health outcomes. This project is taking the assay techniques into a real-life human setting to provide practical information about the feasibility of such approaches, objective data of the likelihood of exposure of human populations to toxicants of interest, and the relation of such exposures to adverse health effects in humans. Specifically, project investigators are 1) evaluating adverse human health effects, particularly neurologic and neurobehavioral effects, of organophosphate (OP) exposure in children from a farm worker community and 2) evaluating the relation of potential exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors, to adverse reproductive and other health effects in a residential community adjacent to a local Superfund site. Project investigators are also providing epidemiologic expertise to the other research cores and projects in designing and implementing field studies to examine the role of exposure to hazardous environmental substances in increasing the risk of adverse human health effects.