Interdisciplinary LSU Superfund Team Receives $10.8M to Fight Pollution from Waste Sites
LSU researchers have been working to protect communities from dangerous pollution from hazardous waste sites since 2009 through the Superfund Research Program. Now, an interdisciplinary LSU team has received $10.8 million from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, to continue and expand their efforts over the next five years.
From the Agriculture Street landfill in the Desire neighborhood in New Orleans to the rural town of Colfax in central Louisiana where hazardous wastes are burned in the open near residences—one of a few commercial thermal treatment operations in the U.S. with a permit to do so—the LSU Superfund Research Program, or SRP, continues to advance the science needed to prevent invisible pollutants from entering homes and endangering health. With a new app and broader collaboration with researchers as far as Australia, the SRP team is attacking environmentally persistent free radicals, or EPFRs, from every angle. EPFRs are a newly recognized class of pollutants discovered in the early 2000s that LSU researchers have linked to lung and heart disease, as well as childhood obesity and enhanced severity of respiratory tract infections.
EPFRs, pronounced ep-fers, are produced during thermal processing such as burning or oxidization of hazardous wastes. They are stabilized on the surface of small, emitted particles that remain in the air for a long time, allowing for inhalation exposure. The LSU SRP has good reason to believe that EPFRs are the main reason particulate matter can be a health hazard. EPFRs, however, are difficult to study.
"We know there are health effects associated with particulate matter," said pulmonary immunotoxicologist Stephania Cormier, director of the LSU Superfund team, Wiener Chair and professor in the LSU Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science and professor of comparative biomedical sciences in the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. "But if you break it down to see what's causing the health effects—the particles, the organics or the metals—the health effects are not fully explained by any one of these components alone. We propose that EPFRs, acting as a complex entity, are the missing link."
Since its inception, the LSU SRP has shown that EPFR exposure can worsen outcomes from respiratory tract infections and heart attacks; increase the risk for childhood obesity after maternal exposure; and lead to the development of a severe form of asthma that is unresponsive to treatment.
Open burning occurs at Clean Harbors thermal treatment facility in Colfax, Louisiana, a predominantly African American community and one of three sites where the LSU Superfund Research Program is actively working to limit the emission of EPFRs. Levels at nearby homes can be 400 times higher than average.
There are currently no rules or regulations for limiting or monitoring EPFRs in the environment, at the state or federal level. The LSU SRP is working diligently to come up with enough data to change this, having already changed how some Louisiana Superfund sites are remediated. Whether it's understanding from a physics and chemistry standpoint what EPFRs are and how they form—especially, how they could be prevented from forming or could be broken down to enhance remediation; revealing how dangerous EPFRs are from a medical, biological and environmental perspective; or working with Louisiana communities across the state to address their concerns and share the latest scientific information, the interdisciplinary LSU SRP team brings together a wide range of experts. The team is comprised of 20 LSU faculty from the College of Science, College of the Coast & Environment and the School of Veterinary Medicine, where researchers study human health as well. It also involves regional and global experts, including the LSU Health Sciences Center–New Orleans, North Carolina State University, Dominican University in northern California and the University of Queensland, Australia. Multifaceted, the LSU SRP is the only federally funded research program aimed at improving the health of Louisiana citizens who live close to hazardous waste sites.
Nearly 53 million Americans live within three miles of a so-called Superfund site—more than one out of every six people. Superfund sites are designated by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, and concentrations of EPFRs in those areas are between 10 and 400 times higher than normal. Superfund sites are sometimes remediated by scooping up toxic dirt and sending it to a treatment site or remediating it onsite with an incinerator, and sometimes by covering it up and burying the dangerous waste—the latter was done at the Agriculture Street landfill in New Orleans.
Louisiana currently has 24 Superfund sites. Among them, 16 are remediated using thermal treatment, capable of producing EPFRs. But Superfund waste is often transported away from Superfund sites to be treated elsewhere. This is the case for 13 of the Louisiana Superfund sites where waste is taken to treatment facilities in often socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, raising important questions about health disparities and environmental justice. The LSU SRP, based in Baton Rouge, is actively working with Louisiana residents near hazardous waste sites in Camp Minden near Shreveport, Colfax near Alexandria and Alsen in East Baton Rouge Parish where most of the population is African American.
"The scary thing about these hazardous waste incinerators is that they're remediating Superfund waste in communities where people don't realize this is happening and not always doing it with the best available technology to control their emissions," Cormier said. "Clean Harbors in Colfax, for example, is not a Superfund site, but they are burning Superfund waste out in the open in addition to old ammunitions and scrapped fireworks. The community was not aware."
With new funding from NIH, the LSU Superfund team will develop an app where Louisiana residents who live near hazardous waste sites can report on their own health and day-to-day air quality. In return, the team will communicate what they know in real-time, answering questions such as, "Is it safe to eat the tomatoes in my garden?" or "With my heart condition, should I stay inside?"
The team is also developing innovative field sensors that community members will help place to pinpoint risk zones depending on where the wind blows, and other factors. Together with community partners, the LSU Superfund team has already helped create a Louisiana Citizens' Guide to Environmental Engagement to provide an overview of the laws that protect the public from pollution, noting that "abundant natural resources and generous government incentives have attracted petrochemical and other manufacturing industries to our state, creating thousands of jobs, revenue for local governments, economic development, and environmental pollution."
A large part of the LSU Superfund Research Program is educating future scientists and engineers. So far, the team has trained over 30 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in chemistry, physics, environmental sciences, biological and biomedical sciences and pharmacology.
"Ultimately, we're doing this work to protect people's health and the environment," Cormier said. "People are being exposed to these pollutants and have valid health concerns. As a scientist who grew up in Louisiana and developed asthma as a child, I am acutely aware of how environmental exposures can not only impact health, but quality of life—and while we can't prevent all exposures, we can work to reduce the ones we know have an impact."
About the Superfund program
Congress created the landmark Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 to clean up toxic waste dumps. The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 created the Superfund Research Program within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NIEHS, to conduct research to address a wide array of complex scientific problems related to hazardous substances. Since 1987, NIEHS, one of the National Institutes of Health, has funded research at 35 universities across the nation. The current annual budget for NIEHS Superfund-related activities is about $80 million. LSU is one of 23 universities currently funded and charged with coming up with practical and scientific solutions to limit human exposure to hazardous substances in contaminated water, soil and air.
The LSU Superfund Research Center was founded by the late chemist Harold "Barry" Dellinger who received the 2014 American Chemical Society Award for Creative Advances in the Environmental Science and Technology. Cormier took over as director in 2016.
Additional Link:
LSU Superfund Research Center: https://lsu.edu/srp/
Contact Alison Satake
LSU Media Relations
510-816-8161
asatake@lsu.edu
Elsa Hahne
LSU Office of Research & Economic Development
225-578-4774
ehahne@lsu.edu
Provided by Louisiana State University
