TOXICOLOGY - AMI TSUCHIYA
Ami Tsuchiya was a graduate student in the UW’s Public Health Nutrition program when she first became interested in environmental health. She was taking Environmental Health 511 with Professor Bill Daniell and had a chance to have a hair sample tested for methylmercury. That small snip of hair revealed a level of mercury in her body so surprising that it spurred her toward a new course of study. It made her wonder about the Japanese-American diet and its potential risk for women of childbearing age.
In summer 2006, Tsuchiya defended her master’s thesis in the Toxicology program and has started looking forward to a career that combines her background as a registered dietitian with her knowledge of toxicology. Although most Toxicology students work in laboratories on the UW campus, Professor Thomas Burbacher, Tsuchiya’s adviser, introduced her to Washington State Department of Health (DOH) toxicologist Koenraad Mariën, who was studying methylmercury exposures in the Japanese and Korean communities. Tsuchiya’s thesis work is part of a larger DOH study led by Mariën.
Tsuchiya interviewed her subjects at a Seattle-area clinic run by a nurse practitioner-midwife. Her thesis research combined laboratory science with interview data and client counseling. She explains that fi sh is a low-fat, protein-rich food that belongs in a healthy, well-balanced diet, but that high mercury levels in some aquatic species such as shark and swordfish can pose risk to pregnant women. Tsuchiya says she wants to do nutritional counseling and enjoys one-on-one contact.
The two years in the Toxicology program have shifted her focus in nutritional counseling from "what to eat" to "what to watch out for." Research interests run in Tsuchiya’s family. Her grandfather, the late Dr. Kenzaburo Tsuchiya, researched the link between cadmium contamination and a painful bone-weakening disease known as itai-itai (literally "ouch ouch").