E.P.A. Awards $400K to University of North Carolina Wilmington for Chemical Exposure Research in Estuaries and Marine Ecosystems

Category: Grants and Awards
Type: News
Source: EPA
Date: Thursday, August 13th, 2015

ATLANTA - Today, the E.P.A. (EPA) announced almost $4 million in backing to 6 universities to study the ecological impacts of manufactured chemicals, leading to better chemical risk assessments and decisions for protecting the environment. Among those, the University of North Carolina Wilmington was selected to gain $399,884 for research to develop an estuarine and marine model for measuring ecological impacts of endocrine disrupting chemicals. The principal investigators include Susanne Brander, Richard Connon, Alvine Mehinto and Will White.

"This innovative research will provide new approaches to evaluate how chemicals influence the health of ecological systems. These approaches can help predict and, more importantly, prevent chemical impacts," said Thomas A. Burke, EPA's Science Advisor and Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Research and Development. "This knowledge will help us more effectively protect the environment from adverse impacts of chemicals over time."

All the plans announced today will develop and apply innovative methods and models to better understand and predict the biological and ecological consequences of exposures to chemicals in the environment.

Other recipients include:

• University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Calif.: To develop a model to enhance the understanding of how the effects of exposure to chemicals are expressed within an organism.
• Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.: To demonstrate how existing data and models can be integrated in a framework that links an initiating event to a regulatory outcome of interest.
• Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich.: To develop an adverse outcome pathway for neurological function in fish that can be used to predict effects of chemicals.
• Oregon State University, Corvallis, Ore.: To develop an approach to define adverse outcome pathways for flame retardants.
• Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas: To develop an approach to understand and predict individual-to-community level ecological effects of chemicals.

These STAR (Science to Achieve Results) grants are part of EPA's Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS) research program's efforts to develop new methods to enhance chemical evaluation and support environmental sustainability.

This research will use innovative methods to understand negative impacts of chemicals in ecological and human populations.

More information about these awards: www.epa.gov/ncer/2014ecoimpacts

More information on CSS research: www.epa.gov/chemical-research

Connect with E.P.A. Region four on Facebook: www.facebook.com/eparegion4

And on Twitter: @EPASoutheast

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