SCHOOL OF
PUBLIC HEALTH AND COMMUNITY MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON AUTUMN,
2001
| INSIDE THIS ISSUE |
| Graduate Training |
Risk analysis is an academic emphasis in the Department of Environmental Health. Graduate students can earn a Risk Emphasis in conjunction with an MS or PhD in Toxicology, Industrial Hygiene, or Environmental Health Technology. Setting effective public policy requires cross-disciplinary training and understanding beyond "exact sciences," said Professor Elaine Faustman, who directs the Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication (IRARC). One of IRARC's research programs is the Center for the Study and Improvement of Regulation, funded by Carnegie Mellon University. "Historically, scientists have not been very good at knowing what policy makers need, and have not provided it in a form that is useful to inform policy," Faustman said. Toxicological risks may be particularly hard to communicate, she said, because harm may be long-term, such as cancers related to arsenic in drinking water. "Delayed risks are harder to monitor - our metrics monitor health impacts that are 20 to 30 years after initial exposure," Faustman said. "It's not like falling off a ladder, where the risk is immediate." A broad public health approach would look at overall vulnerabilities in the population, with a goal of preventing adverse effects. In science, pure and esoteric research is sometimes valued over the applied or practical. Scientists are accustomed to publishing for their peers, Faustman said, but they may not have a "translational approach" that allows them to answer policy makers' questions. "We need people trained to go across that divide." "Universities play a unique role," Faustman said. In addition to teaching Risk Analysis and directing IRARC, Faustman has been instrumental in establishing a joint master's degree program with the Evans School of Public Affairs (see story below). In addition to the Risk Analysis courses that Professor Faustman teaches, several other graduate courses cover policy issues. These include a course on Pesticides and Public Health, taught every other year by Professors Rich Fenske and Matt Keifer, which examines health risks and benefits associated with pesticide use in the United States and internationally. Professor Fenske also teaches a course on Environmental Risk and Society that examines scientific determinations of environmental risks and explores how affected communities and society evaluate such determinations. In
a course entitled Occupational Health and Safety: Policy and Politics,
Senior Lecturers Janice Camp and Sharon Morris provide students
with a better understanding of the historical, political, and policy
issues in occupational health and safety. |
| Training Scientists in Policy ... and Vice Versa |
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The concurrent degrees will allow students to expand their knowledge in each of the areas of study while they develop a specialty. Students will be able to complete a Master of Public Affairs (MPA) and a Master of Science (MS) or Master of Public Health (MPH) in three years, rather than the four that would be necessary if the degrees were earned separately. The program is designed to train professionals who can understand both the science and policy sides of debate, said Professor Elaine Faustman. It is designed to appeal to staff in regulatory agencies, along with Environmental Health majors who will be entering the regulatory arena. Graduates will be able to synthesize the complexities of the worlds of science, management, and policy. The Environmental Health concurrent degrees (MS or MPH) are structured for students who are interested in environmental health and its use in public health policy and management. Students will be exposed to economic theory, health services, behavioral sciences, and statistical methods. Faculty will be actively involved in curriculum decisions, student advising, and directing research projects. MS students will be able to choose from three areas of concentration: technology, toxicology, and industrial hygiene. The MPH is a Department-wide degree in general environmental health. Students interested in pursuing a concurrent degree must apply to the Evans School and Department of Environmental Health separately. |
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For Further reading Admission
procedures for the Evans School MPA program can be found at |
| Emergency Preparedness |
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Treser is one of several School of Public Health and Community Medicine faculty working with the Public Health Practice Program Office of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the Northwest Center for Public Health Preparedness. The preparedness center is part of the School's Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. Treser and his colleagues have been working with public health practitioners and academics in a six-state region to increase the capacity of local and state public health professionals to respond to a variety of public health problems, including bioterrorism. The region includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. The team includes Dr. Mark Oberle, Associate Dean for Public Health Practice; Jack Thompson, director of the School's Northwest Center for Public Health Practice; and Epidemiology Professor James Gale, principal investigator on the Preparedness Center grant. The Centers for Public Health Preparedness are designed to mobilize the national public health workforce-an estimated 500,000 physicians, nurses, environmental health scientists, health educators, laboratory staff, managers and others practicing on the front lines of public health. The system was put in place in response to a 1997 report, Public Health Workforce: An Agenda for the 21st Century. The goal is to ensure front-line public health workers have the skills and competencies required to effectively respond to current and emerging health threats. The network has three tiers: academic centers in schools of public health; specialty centers, generally university based, with specific expertise; and local exemplar centers that develop advanced applications at the community level. The focus is on three key areas of preparedness for bioterrorism and other urgent health threats: The
network has three tiers: academic centers in schools of public health;
specialty centers, generally university based, with specific expertise;
and local exemplar centers that develop advanced applications at
the community level. The focus is on three key areas of preparedness
for bioterrorism and other urgent health threats: In
addition to UW, the academic centers are at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Columbia
University, University of Iowa, University of South Florida, and
Saint Louis University. |
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For more information CDC
bioterrorism site, |
| Helping Make Public Policy |
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Thomas Burbacher: National Academy of Sciences committee that last year reaffirmed the Environmental Protection Agency's standards for methylmercury exposure Harvey Checkoway: working group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which concluded that crystalline silica from occupational exposures is carcinogenic to humans Lucio Costa: Institute of Medicine/ National Academy of Sciences Committee on Gulf War Syndrome Bill Daniell: Ergonomics Rulemaking Advisory Committee, Washington state Department of Labor & Industries; Institute of Medicine committee and expert panel on Gulf War and Health: Review of the Literature on Pesticides and Solvents Dave Eaton: National Research Council panel that reviewed the scientific basis for EPA's proposal to lower the drinking water standard for arsenic Elaine Faustman: chair, National Academy of Sciences Developmental Toxicology Committee; phthalates expert panel, National Toxicology Program's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction; National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council subcommittee on spacecraft water exposure guidelines; National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine subcommittee on upper reference levels of nutrients; External Advisory Committee, Model Toxics Control Act, Washington state Department of Ecology; birth defects advisory committee, Washington state Department of Health; Washington state Right to Know Advisory Council, governor's appointee representing academic and research communities Richard Fenske: pesticides and children's health, Washington state Governor's Pesticide Advisory Board; advisory committee of the Agricultural Health Study, National Cancer Institute Dave Kalman: peer reviewer, National Academy of Sciences Committee on Arsenic in Drinking Water Report, National Research Council Matthew Keifer: National Academy of Sciences/National Research Committee, subcommittee on methyl bromide; National Panel on Pesticides and National Strategies for Health Care Providers Jane Koenig: consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Air Science Advisory Committee, Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter Sally Liu: studying the susceptibility of sensitive populations to fine parti-culates in air pollution as part of the EPA's review of its standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5); public health representative, Agriculture Burning Task Force, Washington state Department of Ecology Michael Morgan: National Research Council committee on air quality in passenger cabins of commercial aircraft Sharon Morris: Innovations Task Force, state Department of Labor & Industries; NIOSH Board of Scientific Counselors that provides guidance on the Institute's research programs; Washington Governor's Industrial Safety and Health Advisory Committee Tim Takaro: president's advisory board on radiation and workers' health; Department of Energy/Department of Labor's physicians' panel for reviewing workers compensation Chuck Treser: ad hoc committee developing Washington state response plan for viruses transmitted by mosquitoes and ticks Gerald van Belle: Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee of the US Food and Drug Administration.
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| Alice Hamilton: A Policy Pioneer |
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In a career that spanned 50 years, Hamilton pioneered occupational epidemiology and industrial hygiene. Her findings led to sweeping reforms, both voluntary and regulatory. She began her academic career in 1893 at the Women's Medical College of Northwestern University in Chicago, and also moved into Jane Addams' Hull House, center of the social reform movement in the US. Through Hull House's well-baby clinic she became acquainted with immigrant families, and learned about parents' unsafe working conditions. Her first public policy role came during the typhoid fever epidemic in Chicago in 1902. She made a connection between improper sewage disposal and the role of flies in transmitting the disease. Her findings led to reorganization of the Chicago Health Department. She was asked to direct the governor of Illinois' Occupational Disease Commission in 1910, the first such commission in the world. As a result of its findings, several workers' compensation laws were passed in Illinois. She was asked by the US commissioner of labor to replicate her research on a national level, where she looked at the hazards posed by exposure to lead, arsenic, mercury, organic solvents, and radium, which was used in manufacture of watch dials. In 1919, Hamilton was appointed assistant professor in a new industrial hygiene program at Harvard, the first woman on Harvard's faculty. She served on the League of Nations Health Committee in the 1920s, investigating industrial health conditions worldwide, and published the first American textbook on industrial toxins, Industrial Poisons in the United States. After retiring from Harvard in 1935, she became a consultant for the Division of Labor Standards of the US Labor Department. Her survey of the rayon industry led to passage of Pennsylvania's first workers' compensation law. While serving as president of the National Consumers League, she published her autobiography, Exploring the Dangerous Trades. In
1995, when a postage stamp was unveiled in her honor, Harvard Dean
of Public Health Harvey Fineberg said Hamilton "was the first physician
to use the scientific approach to study threats to health in the
workplace." |
When
Alice Hamilton graduated from medical school in 1893, there was
no specialty of occupational medicine. There were no standards for
safety at work, and employers routinely fired sick workers and replaced
them with new ones looking for jobs.
| Toxicogenomics Consortium: New tools to solve genetic puzzles | ||
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The Hutchinson Center/UW Toxicogenomics Consortium, part of a research collective involving academic institutions nationwide, will receive more than $7 million in funding over five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Researchers will use the tools of genomics to obtain a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of environmentally induced disease processes. The genome is broadly defined as all of an organism's genetic material. The long-range goal of the Hutchinson Center/UW partnership is to shed light on genetic differences that make some people more sensitive to various environmental exposures. The consortium's four laboratory-based projects will focus on the effects of various toxic substances on breast-cancer, how exposures to certain pesticides may affect behavior in children, environmental factors that may harm the developing nervous system, and development of laboratory tests that can replace animal testing.
The principal investigator of the Seattle consortium, an expert in both environmental sciences and DNA-array technology, is Dr. Helmut Zarbl of the Hutchinson Center's Human Biology and Public Health Sciences divisions. "The ultimate goal is to predict an individual's risk of cancer based on their genetic profile and environmental exposures," said Zarbl, also an associate professor of pathology and an affiliate associate professor in toxicology. Co-principal investigator of the consortium is Dr. David Eaton, professor in the Department of Environmental Health and director of its NIEHS-funded Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health. "Many chronic diseases-such as most cancers, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease-are caused by complex interactions between genetics and the exposures to factors in our environment," said Eaton, who is also Associate Dean for Research in the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Other departmental researchers involved in the consortium are Terry Kavanagh, principal investigator of the Toxicology Core, and Curt Omiecinski, Elaine Faustman, and Lucio Costa, who have research projects funded under the Center. Chris Hassett and Theo Bammler also play important roles in this new Center. Other academic institutions participating in the consortium are the University of North Carolina, Oregon Health and Science University, Duke University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We
know we can stretch the research dollar by having scientists at
NIEHS and grantees at universities work in concert," said NIEHS
Director Kenneth Olden, "but perhaps more important, we know that
bringing ideas together in science increases the advances we achieve." |
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| Research and its Application to Ergonomics |
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"In this laboratory work, we are taking a snapshot of a work day and looking at the resultant muscle fatigue and recovery," Johnson said. "A muscle can do the same average amount of work in different ways, and depending on how the work is structured, we believe it will affect how much the muscle fatigues." Together, he and Jensen intend to use the data to identify how various work patterns influence fatigue and recovery. These patterns are similar to those found during actual work. Ultimately, their findings may be useful in making workplace modifications. The two international collaborators specialize in measuring physiological outcomes associated with low-force, but highly repetitive tasks, such as using a computer mouse. Jensen's measurements of muscle activity in the forearms have shown that people are typically working their muscles at less than 10% of their maximal capacity during computer mouse use. Johnson, with his force-sensing computer mouse, has demonstrated that people squeeze the sides of the computer mouse with very low forces, typically just about 0.4 Newtons (roughly 2 ounces of force). Despite these low forces, people are developing problems. The patterns of the forces, the fact that they are often relatively constant and continuous, may be part of the problem.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that office work causes more days of sick leave than manufacturing. Arm and neck ailments are among the slowest to heal, resulting in an average of three weeks sick time. Low arm and neck problems are common in computer work. People usually don't go to the doctor with this type of complaint, Jensen said, but "continue working the way they always did, and some of them may get into some really serious trouble." In Denmark, educational campaigns in the workplace, news media, and union publications have created a high level of awareness of computer-related disorders, Jensen said. Employers bring physical therapists and other consultants into the workplace to help fit the work to the workers (fitting the work to the workers is the essence of ergonomics). Adjustable desks and chairs are required at workstations there. Such awareness is growing in Washington, where a state ergonomics rule was enacted in May 2000. The state Department of Labor and Industries calculated that musculoskeletal injuries cost more than $411 million a year in medical treatment and lost wages, and represent a high toll of pain, suffering, and lost productivity for both employers and workers. The Washington state rule applies to workers who perform intensive keying more than four hours per day. Mouse use is not covered yet, Johnson said, but the scientific body of evidence is developing about the cumulative effects of the small motions that control mouse work. Jensen has returned to Denmark, where he continues his research into diseases associated with visual display unit work. He is conducting an epidemiological study among employees at technology companies and evaluating the effect of interventions. Another project looks at variables such as time spent with computer work, type of work, input devices, and environmental factors such as indoor climate and workstation design. Johnson
is developing the new safety and ergonomics lab for future studies,
and continues to work on computer-related exposure assessment projects
with the School of Public Health at Harvard and the Department of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Gūteborg University in
Sweden.
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For further reading: Chris
Jensen's Department of Research in Visual Display Unit Work,
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| Ergonomics Policy Evaluation |
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"Washington is one of only two states that currently has an ergonomics rule," said Senior Lecturer Sharon Morris, director of the project. "We want to know whether having an ergonomics rule increases ergonomics awareness and prevention activities in the workplace. We're collecting baseline data now and will go back in two years to see whether knowledge and prevention activities have changed." This study is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and conducted in conjunction with the SHARP research program at the Department of Labor and Industries. SHARP mailed an ergonomics survey to more than 10,000 Washington businesses in 1998 and again this year. The work sites for the UW interviews were selected from a sample of the businesses that returned the SHARP questionnaire. "I
believe this is the largest study ever conducted that observes the
effects of implementing a major new workplace rule," said Morris.
"The results will be helpful to employers, workers and regulators
in developing future occupational safety and health policies."
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| People & Places |
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Drew Brodkin was appointed to the American Thoracic Society committee to update the 1986 ATS statement on "The diagnosis of nonmalignant diseases related to asbestos." Lucio Costa was an invited participant for the Neurotoxicity Task Force, European Commission, Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy, in October, and an invited expert at a workshop on developmental neurotoxicity of pyrethroid insecticides for the European Commission, Directorate General for Health and Consumer Protection in Brussels in November . Sharon Elliott was elected as chair-elect of the Administrator's Association of the NIEHS Centers Programs at the 59th Environmental Health Sciences Center Director's/Administrators meeting in Austin, Texas, in October. Elaine Faustman's Center for Child Environmental Health Risks Research received a supplement from EPA/NIEHS and her Institute for Risk Analysis and Risk Communication had a new initiative funded by the University of Arizona/NIEHS. Sally Liu organized a workshop on Air Quality Monitoring Technology for the US EPA and Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration: (http://depts.washington.edu/~tepa/). Liu presented three talks during the workshop and presented to the Department of Atmospheric Science and the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at the National Taiwan University after the workshop. Curt Omiecinski was a guest speaker at a drug metabolism workshop for Africa, hosted by the Department of Pharmacology, University of the Free State, in South Africa in March. His introduced the cytochrome P450 (CYP450) enzyme family and discussed the scientific basis for ethnic variations in drug response and toxicity. Omiecinski and Sid Nelson (Dean, School of Pharmacy) will work with colleagues at the University of Arizona NIEHS Center. This is part of a new supplemental grant the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health received to develop capabilities to study the way proteins work inside cells, and how they interact with each other. Scott
MacKay,
continuing education director, recently met with Secretary of Labor
Elaine Chao. There was interest in the online course that the department's
OSHA Training Institute has developed in the past year. Department
Chair Dave Kalman noted that
the OSHA center has emerged as a leader The Department was well represented at the Northwest Occupational Health Conference in Seaside, Oregon, in October, with presentations by the following faculty, staff, and students: Janice Camp, Lee Monteith, Richard Neitzel, Kate Stewart, Matt Keifer, Rick Gleason, Robert Leo, Carolyn Reeb Whitaker, Marie Martin, and Gerry Croteau. Also, nine graduates of the Department presented papers. Departmental
faculty, affiliate faculty, and staff taught several workshops at
the annual state-of-the-art conference of the College of Occupational
and Environmental Medicine, held in Seattle in late October and
early November. Tim Takaro was
on the conference planning committee. Presenters included Takaro,
Matt Keifer, Janice Camp, Rick Gleason, and Rick
Neitzel on hazards of Northwest agriculture, commercial
fishing, and forestry; Mike Morgan
and Kate Stewart on airplane
manufacturing and office ergonomics; Keifer
on international health; Harvey Checkoway
and Gary Franklin on evaluating
causation in occupational disease; Takaro
on screening for occupational lung disease; Drew
Brodkin on liver toxins; and Dave
Eaton on the genomics revolution. |
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| New MPH Program |
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Until now, the department's only MPH option required a MD or PhD degree, and appealed most to physicians who concurrently entered an Occupational and Environmental Medicine residency program. The new MPH option is open to applicants with relevant undergraduate degrees. Rather than being associated with one of the four Departmental programs (Toxicology, Industrial Hygiene & Safety, Environmental Technology, and Occupational & Environmental Medicine), it will be administered by faculty from all four programs through a Department-wide MPH coordination committee. The newly approved curriculum requires a thesis; a non-thesis option is under review. Students can enroll in other degree pathways, such as Master of Science or Doctor of Philosophy, at the same time. For
more information, contact the graduate program office at ehgrad@u.washington.edu
or (206) 685-9331. |
| THE FINE PRINT | |
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Environmental Health News is published three times a year by the Dept. of Environmental Health at the University of Washington. Inquiries should be addressed to Environmental
Health News, Box 354695, Reprint permission is granted provided that copyright notice as given below is included. We would appreciate receiving a copy of your reprinted material. This newsletter is also available online at http://depts.washington.edu/envhlth/info/publications.html © 2001 ISSN number 0029-7925 Department of Environmental Health |
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Managing Editor - Sharon L. Morris Senior Writer & Editor - Kathy Hall Designer & Illustrator - Cathy Schwartz Editorial Assistant - Kipling West Interim Department Chair - David A. Kalman |
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