The objective of the Outreach Core is to significantly improve the abilities of citizens and communities to participate meaningfully at Superfund sites. To do this, a collaborative effort between MSU Institute for Environmental Toxicology (IET) and the Technical Outreach Services for Communities Program (TOSC) for the EPA Great Lakes/Mid-Atlantic Hazardous Substances Research Center, also housed at MSU, will be undertaken. The Core investigators will work closely with citizens and communities to develop materials and approaches that greatly increase public access to the most current and unbiased information about the risks of environmental contaminants and the techniques available to minimize these risks. Such access is currently limited since relevant materials are often difficult to find in either hand copy or web versions and, in many cases, do not exist. At least as important, available materials are generally not written at the comprehension level of most citizens. The Core Leader and the IET staff will focus on the toxicological and risk assessment facets of this information and the Co-Investigator and TOSC staff will address remediation and community relations issues. Specific areas of greatest need will based on a survey of TOSC coordinators, carried out last year. Citizens will help to identify any areas which may have been missed. Searchers will be made for written and web materials in each of these areas. Citizen-friendly Internet search approaches will be developed as will relevant computer simulations. After pre-screening by experts, all of these products will be reviewed by citizens and their comments used to select and refine the best ones. In areas where no, or poor, materials products are identified, new ones will be created, reviewed by citizens and refined. These products will be used by EPA and university staff in providing assistance at Superfund sites to improve citizen understand and management of human health risks.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 417 publications
