Harvard to receive $651,708 to study impact of manufactured chemicals

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week announced six academic winners of grants to study the ecological impacts of manufactured chemicals, including the Harvard School of Public Health, which will receive more than $600,000 in funding.

“Ecological risk assessment typically focuses on individual chemicals and their impact on individual animals, but we really need to better understand the effects of multiple stressors, including multiple chemicals, on populations," Katherine Ellen von Stackelberg, Harvard principle investigator, said. “We are excited for this project, which will allow us to combine data sets and modeling approaches to help regulators make better decisions.”

Harvard’s project will be conducted in cooperation with Washington State University and Western Washington University. It is titled “Integrated Modeling Approaches to Support Systems-Based Ecological Risk Assessment.”

“This kind of research gives us new ways to evaluate how chemicals affect our ecology,"  EPA New England Regional Administrator Curt Spalding said. "These innovative approaches can help us predict and, more importantly, prevent chemical impacts. With this knowledge, we can better protect the environment.”

In total, the EPA announced nearly $4 million in grants, which are funded under the Science to Achieve Results program.