Superfund Research Program

Research Translation Core

Project Leader: Justin Teeguarden (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Grant Number: P42ES016465
Funding Period: 2009-2020

Project-Specific Links

Final Progress Reports

Year:   2019  2012 

In the past year, the Research Translation Core (RTC) began working collaboratively with several community groups and public health agencies to develop plain language infographics and study summaries related to the Portland Harbor Superfund site. An infographic about benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P) was developed to address concerns over B[a]P contamination at the Portland Harbor Superfund site, and how regulatory changes to B[a]P may affect the remedial design. This infographic is now being adapted with the University of Washington to address a similar situation with the Duwamish River remedial design. Additionally, the RTC has worked closely with the Community Engagement Core and the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community to return data from an individual ambient air quality study; the results of the study and the evaluation of environmental health knowledge gained from participating in the study were published in 2019 (Rohlman et al. 2019). The RTC continues to work with project leaders and institutional staff to refine and improve their disaster institutional review board (IRB) protocol. To date, the disaster IRB, which encompasses time-sensitive opportunistic sampling events for emerging contaminants, has been activated three times: i) Hurricane Harvey (Texas); ii) Antarctica – emerging contaminants and; iii) Hurricane Florence (North Carolina). The RTC has shared its IRB protocol and associated resources with several other universities and the NIH DR2 program and are working with NIH DR2 staff on an upcoming Disaster IRB workshop.