The MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences is a multidisciplinary research organization which has taken as its primary mission the discovery of the relationship between human exposure to environmental chemicals, mutation, and genetic diseases such as cancer and birth defects. The Center faculty are integrated in six multidisciplinary research programs which address the sources, environmental movement and genetic effects of chemicals borne to humans by food, air and water. One of these, the Superfund Basic Research Program, involves study of chemical exposure and genetic change in the population of the nearby Aberjona River Basin. This major effort began with four years of public outreach activities and which continue in a public education program to explain the basis, potential value and limitations of our studies in this community in which many of our faculty and staff reside. The MIT academic departments represented by Center faculty include Toxicology (7), Civil Engineering (7), Chemical Engineering (5), Mechanical Engineering (7), Chemistry (2), Biology (2) and Earth and Planetary Sciences (1). Joining these several disciplines together are the shared Core Laboratories in Analytical Chemistry and Toxicology which permit analysis, testing and identification of the most important human mutagens in complex environmental mixtures. Key technologies developed at the Center include means to measure and identify chemicals in human tissue proteins and measurement of mutations and mutational spectra in human cells or tissues. These technologies now drive a transmutation of present core facilities and faculty research toward direct measurement of chemicals and patterns of genetic changes in human cells and tissues. Through these studies we hope to fulfill our primary mission and make a contribution to public health that will justify public support of work.
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