School of Public Health and Community Medicine - University of Washington - Autumn 2007

Fenske Wins Two National Awards

Rich Fenske with
NIOSH award.
Photo by Christina Bowles.

Professor Richard Fenske was recently honored for his contributions to both the environmental and occupational health sciences. Fenske, who is our department's associate chair and director of the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health (PNASH) center, was recognized by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the International Society of Exposure Analysis (ISEA) for his contributions to the assessment and mitigation of human exposure to chemical hazards.

"It is unusual and a very pleasant surprise to win major awards in two disciplines, but it is a testimony to the interdisciplinary nature of the research in our department," Fenske said. "I share these awards with the exceptional students and staff who have worked with me over the years."

NIOSH Award

In September, Fenske received the 2006 NIOSH Director's Award for Scientific Achievement in Occupational Safety and Health for his work with florescent tracers, a novel technique for assessing skin exposure to hazardous chemicals among agricultural workers.

Fenske developed the florescent tracer technique for his doctoral dissertation and has been refining the measurement method since then. His team at PNASH applied the technique to a train-the-trainer educational program.

The center has published a pesticide safety training manual, using the fluorescent tracer method (available in English and Spanish at http://depts.washington.edu/pnash/).

"When my colleagues and I first used the fluorescent tracer technique for our pesticide exposure research in the early 1980s, we quickly came to appreciate its potential as a training tool," said Fenske. "Seeing the fluorescent tracer glowing on their skin and clothes made an immediate impact on the pesticide handlers in our studies and provided them with a better understanding of how contamination had occurred."

"We are pleased to recognize Dr. Fenske's leadership in this groundbreaking research with important practical applications," said Dr. John Howard, NIOSH director. "It is particularly noteworthy that this technique offers a powerful tool for practitioners in reducing the risk of occupational illnesses among Hispanic workers."

ISEA Award

In October, ISEA presented Fenske with its 2007 Jerome J. Wesolowski Award for "sustained and outstanding contributions to the knowledge and practice of human exposure assessment."

Fenske's plenary speech at the 17th Annual ISEA Conference was titled, "For Good Measure: Origins and Prospects of Exposure Science." Because occupational exposures are often higher than environmental ones, many of the measuring techniques were pioneered by industrial hygienists in the workplace, and then adapted for environmental exposures. In his address to ISEA, Fenske called for a reframing of exposure science to merge occupational and community exposure approaches. The Industrial Hygiene program in our department recently changed its name to Exposure Sciences to acknowledge this trend.

Fenske and his colleagues at the PNASH Center pioneered measurements for children's exposure to pesticides. Their methods for measuring organophosphate pesticides in house dust and pesticide metabolites in the urine of children have been used by other laboratories and have been a model for researchers at University of California, Berkeley; Oregon Health and Sciences University; Wake Forest University; Rutgers University; and NIOSH.

Chensheng (Alex) Lu, a former postdoctoral fellow in Fenske's lab, nominated him for the honor. Lu is now an assistant professor in Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.

-Christina Bowles of NIOSH and Marsha Rule of UW contributed to this story

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