Environmental Health
We are what surrounds us
Pesticide exposure can be deadly in Minnesota’s fertile Red River Valley. SPH’s Pat McGovern is using an innovative technique called “photovoice” to determine families’ interaction with the poisons.
How the environment interacts with genes to lead to chronic disease is the research focus for faculty in the school’s Division of Environmental Health Sciences
That environmental influence in called the “envirome” and it includes socioeconomic status, behavior, lifestyle, nutrition, pollutant chemicals, environmental toxicants, and how individuals interact with each other.
“We believe in the ‘envirome,’” says EnHS head William Toscano.
Examples of envirome research are determining what mercury in fish does to the human body and exploring how the air quality in India affects the lung health of women and children.
SPH associate professor Jeff Mandel is investigating the relationship between POPs—Persistent Organic Pollutants, like dioxins and PCBs—and diabetes mellitus. Previous studies have indicated the link, but haven’t demonstrated whether the relationship is cause and effect or simply coincidental. But some studies have shown that higher exposure to POPs leads to more severediabetes.
“That’s the intrigue,” says Mandel. He thinks one of the next steps should be to look at POPs in relationship to a lab assessment of the metabolic changes of diabetes in an effort to better understand the biologic impact that these pollutants may have.
Over the past 20 years, rates of asthma have skyrocketed, but researchers still aren’t sure why. SPH associate professor John Adgate is working with teachers in the Minneapolis public school system on the Home Allergen Reduction Study. The teachers have acted as liaisons between the researchers and the children’s families.
Many of the families in the study live in older homes and rental properties, where mold and other contaminants are a concern. “One of the places where we are most exposed to pollutants is in our own homes,” says Adgate. “The levels of certain pollutants are, in some cases, higher in your house than they are elsewhere.”
Home pollutants are associated with asthma but the nature of the association is, according to Adgate, “one of the unsettled questions related to the great asthma epidemic that we’re going through now.”
EnHS research to assess pesticide exposure in Minnesota’s Red River Valley is taking an innovative turn. The Red River Valley in northwest Minnesota is a major wheat, sugar beet, and potato-growing region and it contains some of the country’s highest levels of pesticides. Recent research that included the valley showed death rates from birth defects among male infants born in “high wheat producing” counties was more than twice as high as in “low wheat producing” counties.
Associate professor Pat McGovern is collaborating with the University’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships program to use a technique called “photovoice” to further understand the whole picture of pesticide exposure, which could also entail using the poisons on home gardens, lawns, and in indoor pest control
The University team will work with three communities: immigrant families from Somalia, women and children in the federal WIC program, and the White Earth Band of Chippewa. Community members are given cameras and asked to take photos that show their families’ exposure to pesticides. It is not just photographic “evidence” that this method produces, but also a view of how these families see their environment. Photovoice has been successful with populations that rely on oral storytelling over written communication.
The photos will be compiled in an exhibit for local government, health care providers, and tribal councils. The hope is that this effort will lead to more projects in which these populations can identify and curb pesticide exposure. “The notion is to build confidence in the community and let them tell their own stories,” says McGovern.