News

A team of researchers has taken advantage of the unique circumstances surrounding the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China to examine the link between air pollution and health. The result of their study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows a direct correlation between pollution levels and specific physiological changes that increase risk for cardiovascular disease.

This study clearly shows that a large scale intervention to reduce air pollution can have an immediate positive effect on health, said David Q. Rich, Sc.D., M.P.H., first author of the study and an epidemiologist with the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Community and Preventive Medicine. As air quality improved during the games in Beijing, markers of key biological pathways associated with cardiovascular disease also improved, demonstrating that – even in healthy young Beijing residents – there are specific mechanistic links between air pollution and cardiovascular health.

When the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needed a scientist to lead the panel charged with making recommendations regarding hazardous levels of lead in children, they turned to one of Rochester’s own.

Deborah Cory-Slechta, Ph.D., professor of Environmental Medicine and an internationally recognized authority on the hazards of lead, was co-chair of the CDC panel that last week recommended slashing the level of lead that should be considered as the point for intervention by physicians and public health authorities.

How exposure to chemicals and other environmental factors from the earliest months of life – even before we are born – affect our long-term health is the subject of a new five-year study by a scientist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

B. Paige Lawrence, Ph.D., associate professor of Environmental Medicine and of Microbiology and Immunology, has been awarded $1.75 million by the National Institutes of Health to study how early exposure to factors in the environment affect our immune system.

Scientists are untangling how the tiniest pollution particles – which we take in with every breath we breathe – affect our health, making people more vulnerable to cardiovascular and respiratory problems. While scientists know that air pollution can aggravate heart problems, showing exactly how it does so has been challenging.

In a study published recently in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scientists showed that in people with diabetes, breathing ultrafine particles can activate platelets, cells in the blood that normally reduce bleeding from a wound, but can contribute to cardiovascular disease.

Scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center who are exploring the health effects of environmental agents have received $8 million in new funding from the National Institutes of Health to continue their work for five more years.

The investigators who make up the Environmental Health Sciences Center study the effects on our bodies of a myriad of substances and compounds. There is no shortage of research topics. Mercury, lead, air pollutants, pesticides, plastics, copper, cigarette smoke, diesel fumes, and nanoparticles found in products like perfumes and sunscreens are some of the substances under scrutiny.

The latest funding means the center’s work protecting people from environmental threats will have been continuously funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for 40 years - from 1975, when the center was founded during President Ford’s administration, to 2015. It’s the longest-running research center funded by any NIH institute at the University.