Boston University Superfund Research Program

SRP Program staff would like to congratulate University of Arizona Superfund Research Program researchers.

Use of Spatial and Temporal Analyses to Provide Insights into the Environmental Etiology of Cancer Since 1995, researchers at the SRP at Boston University (BU) have used Geographic Information System (GIS) data and increasingly sophisticated statistical methods to examine the geographical distribution of disease, which can provide important clues to the origins of the disease.

Background: High-level occupational exposures to some industrial chemicals have been associated with liver diseases, including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). However, the potential role of low-level environmental pollution on liver disease in the general population has not been evaluated.

Objective: To determine if environmental pollutants are associated with an elevation in serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity and suspected NAFLD in US adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional cohort study evaluated adult participants without viral hepatitis, hemochromatosis, or alcoholic liver disease from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2004. ALT elevation in men was defined as ≥ 37 IU/L (age 18-20) and ≥ 48 IU/L (age ≥21), while in women it was defined as ≥ 30 IU/L (age 18-20) and ≥ 31 IU/L (age ≥21). Adjusted odds ratios for ALT elevation were determined across exposure quartiles for 17 pollutant subclasses comprising 111 individual pollutants present with at least a 60% detection rate. Adjustments were made for age, race, sex, body mass index, poverty income ratio, and insulin resistance. Individual pollutants from subclasses associated with ALT elevation were subsequently analyzed.

Results: The overall prevalence of ALT elevation was 10.6%. Heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were associated with dose-dependent increased adjusted odds ratios for ALT elevation. Within these subclasses, increasing whole blood levels of lead and mercury as well as lipid-adjusted serum levels of 20 PCBs were individually associated with ALT elevation.

Conclusions: PCB, lead, and mercury exposures were associated with unexplained ALT elevation, a proxy marker of NAFLD, in adult NHANES 2003-2004 participants.

The July 1-31, 2010 Technology Innovation News Survey has been posted to the CLU-IN web site. The Survey contains market/commercialization information; reports on demonstrations, feasibility studies and research; and other news relevant to the hazardous waste community interested in technology development.

On The Cover:

A hunter on a snowmobile pulls a sled across the ice under the midnight sun, Nunavut, Canada.

Editor's Summary

As many as 70,000 volunteers and rescue workers responded to the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) attacks, many toiling for months to clear mountains of debris containing a range of toxic compounds. Health effects seen since that time in WTC responders include respiratory, gastrointestinal, chemosensory, and mental health problems; many of these effects have persisted for years. In this podcast, Philip Landrigan discusses his work with WTC responders as a physician and an epidemiologist and how lessons learned from the WTC cleanup may be applied to other disasters. Landrigan is the chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and dean for Global Health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.