TSR&TP Director John Knezovich directs a game of CSI: Toxics

TSR&TP Director John Knezovich kicked off the 20th Annual Research Symposium in Santa Cruz with an interactive game of CSI:Toxics, Case Study Investigations. He presented three case studies of catastrophic events and asked the audience to guess the causes.

Former TSR&TP Director Jerry Last was the first speaker Friday evening. He talked about the TSR&TP history as viticulture: roots, trunks, branches, fruit and the occasional pest infestation. The TSR&TP began in 1985 with legislation from the state directing UC to address issues of toxic substances in California. Last ended his talk by saying that change is good and this program has worked hard over our 22 years to continually reinvent ourselves. He encouraged the students and faculty attending to do the same.

New Tools in Biomonitoring

Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council and Associate Clinical Professor at UC San Francisco, gave the evening's keynote address on new tools for identifying, tracking and reducing environmental health hazards in California. She talked about what we should be ready for and what we need to be working toward: emerging issues such as new environmental toxicants, upward disease trends and clusters, and crises and disasters. More sensitive methods of detecting toxics are being put to use in biomonitoring efforts worldwide.

Natural Resources Defense Council scientist Gina Solomon believes increased biomonitoring in humans will help drive the effort to reduce toxic chemical emissions.

Solomon said a biomonitoring program for human breastmilk in Sweden discovered a massive increase in the levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), flame retardants used in plastics and textiles, from breast milk samples from the 1970s to today. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control did some sampling of breast adipose tissue and found levels of PBDEs more than ten times higher than the Swedish study. As a result, there was a recent public health action to ban some of the flame retardants. However, there are now some concerns about the chemicals that are replacing the PBDEs.

"We have a history in the case of solvents and flame retardants of moving from one fairly toxic chemical to another," said Solomon. She emphasized the need for better information on what chemicals are used in California and better monitoring of what agents are in the environment - specifically biomonitoring in humans. The time lag between an encounter with a hazard and development of a clinical disease can be decades. We can help shrink this by looking at early biomarkers of effect or exposure. The California biomonitoring program was created with legislation passed this last year to monitor a variety of pesticides, metals, and other toxics. Two thousand samples will be collected and analyzed and people will have access to their own results. More information on the environmental public health tracking program can be found at http://catracking.com

There will be significant challenges coming up in California: potential floods, infectious diseases, red tides and the consequences of global warming. According to the World Health Organization, global warming is already causing about 160,000 deaths per year. We have an opportunity in California with AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, to make this relevant to us working on toxic chemicals. "A lot of the things we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also reduce toxic chemical emissions," declared Solomon.

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