RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK -- Research into how pollutants cause disease has come a long way since an industrial dump in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, N.Y., brought about legislation to clean up or cap the worst toxic spills in the United States.
But with cancer and other pollution-linked diseases continuing to be lethal health problems, sizable gaps remain in environmental health research more than 40 years after Love Canal.
To fill some of the holes, about 80 doctors, epidemiologists, chemists, lawyers, statisticians and politicians gathered last week at the N.C. Biotechnology Center.
"The substances we create are not measured by their health impact," said Paul Anastas, assistant administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development in RTP. "We need to step back and redefine performance, so we make better designs and reduce the potential of harm."
Anastas, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, is also known as the father of green chemistry.
Supporters of green chemistry are no longer satisfied with reducing the amounts of environmental toxins. pesticides and pollutants in water, air and soil one at a time. They also want to look at how people's health is affected by where they live and work, what they eat, drink and breathe, and how they feel.
Spurred by some of the changes the health care overhaul holds in store - particularly expanded insurance coverage and electronic medical records - green chemistry supporters in the EPA, universities and public health agencies are pushing to bring together databases and expertise from a broad range of scientific disciplines, including the social sciences, urban planning, transportation, epidemiology and medical research.
"We have to get over the old turf battles," said Thomas Burke, associate chair of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "If we do it right, we ask the right questions."
First steps toward this holistic approach already exist.
One is the environmental health tracking system the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched in partnership with the EPA in 2002. Among the data collected for 24 states are asthma hospitalizations, birth defects, cancers and measurements for air and drinking water quality.
North Carolina is not among the 24 states contributing to the CDC tracking system. But according to Dr. Wayne Cascio, associate vice chancellor of research at East Carolina University, researchers in the state followed a similar, holistic spirit with surprising results two years ago.
By combining health statistics with data from the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, researchers determined that a 2008 massive wildfire in Eastern North Carolina led to an increase in the number of heart failures in the exposed areas.
