Project 2
Epidemiologic Studies

Ellen B. Gold, Project Leader
Bill L. Lasley, Senior Investigator

Specific Aims

The Epidemiologic Studies project provides evaluation of human health effects associated with exposure to environmental contaminants in residents adjacent to a Superfund site in Sacramento, California by evaluating physiologic dysfunction. Specifically, reproductive and other hormone-related health effects will be ascertained in women residing downwind or in the groundwater plume of the Sacramento Superfund site. These rates of health effects will be compared to those in a similar, non-exposed nearby sample of women, and these rates will also be related to likelihood of exposure. In addition to interviewing women residing in these areas and in a comparison area, we will use serum and urine biomarkers of exposure and of health outcomes that have been developed in UC Davis laboratories.

Applications of epidemiologic techniques in this project will not only facilitate applications of the biomarkers in humans in the exposed population and assessment of the relation of exposure to environmental contaminants to human health effects, but will also illuminate modification of these effects by host and lifestyle factors.

I. Examine, in female adult residents living adjacent to a Superfund site in Sacramento, the likelihood of exposure to potential endocrine disruptors, primarily perchlorate but also including organic solvents and by-products of burning of toxic wastes. We will accomplish this aim by examining routes of exposure.

II. Compare thyroid function in women who were likely and those who were unlikely to have been exposed to perchlorate.

III. Compare rates of adverse reproductive outcomes in representative samples of women in residential areas who were likely and those who were unlikely to be exposed to endocrine disruptors.