Partnerships

Superfund Research Program

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Overview

The NIEHS Superfund Research Program's sister agencies - the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and state and regional hazardous waste agencies - are tasked to develop and implement policies that protect health and they depend upon the best science. SRP program staff and grant recipients actively engages with colleagues at federal and state agencies to improve the Program's ability to address societal needs, transfer the most recent research results, and identify potential future research needs.

ATSDR: Seminar Series

Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable (FRTR)

EPA Office of Land and Emergency Management (OLEM): Risk e-Learning Webinars

EPA Office of Research and Development and Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation: Ongoing Collaborations

Other Activities

Research to Risk Assessment Interagency Working Group

SRP established a communication network of senior staff and managers from NIEHS, EPA Headquarters and Regional offices, and ATSDR to introduce new science for application to site risk assessments. It also provided academic researchers with the opportunity to work with environmental health practitioners to see that their research findings are applied to improve human and environmental public health.

The Research to Risk Assessment model of cross-agency collaboration conducted projects that were mutually beneficial to both the environmental health practitioners and the academic researchers. For example:

Airborne PCBs in Public Schools: To address a concern from EPA Region 2 related to elevated levels of PCBs in a New York City public school, EPA risk assessment experts and University of Iowa SRP-funded researchers collaborated to investigate source attribution and designed a lab study with the goal of reducing the uncertainty factors associated with the application of the reference concentration (RfC).
Vapor Intrusion: Working Group members from ATSDR worked with researchers from the Brown University Center on site-specific projects. The collaboration provided real-world data for the researchers to test and improve their models and allowed ATSDR to benefit from the SRP grantee's expertise in review of site data.
Fish Advisory Network: SRP and EPA grantees and staff established a network to share research and information on fish advisories, consumption, and fish trade programs at Superfund sites.
Lead Contaminated Soil Treatment with Phosphate Amendments: SRP grantees and EPA risk assessors organized sessions at the American Chemical Society Environmental Chemistry to discuss effectiveness and challenges of the use of phosphate amendments to treat lead-contaminated soils at hazardous waste sites and prepared a manuscript for publication in Environmental Public Health.
Information Exchange Webinars: Working Group members from EPA and ATSDR presented webinars that provided SRP researchers, particularly trainees, with information on the history, science, and policies of Superfund sites and an overview of human health risk assessment.
Best Practice Tips for SRP Grantees: Working Group members compiled a series of documents to provide SRP grantees with best practices for establishing and maintaining constructive working relationships with officials at hazardous waste sites. Individual components include:

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Webcasts

Your Environment. Your Health.