Community Engagement Core (CEC) Roughly 53 million people live within 3 miles of a Superfund remediation site. Research on environmental contaminants from these sites indicates that environmentally persistent free radical (EPFR) concentrations range to an order of magnitude in concentration above those in surrounding uncontaminated areas. These EPFRs have been shown to form during thermal treatment (TT) of Superfund sites and other hazardous wastes. Our data demonstrate that EPFRs adversely impact cardiovascular, respiratory, and metabolic health. The overall goal of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) is to build an innovative and responsive, bidirectional community engagement program to develop solutions to reduce exposure and enhance the health and safety of communities near Superfund sites and other sites where hazardous materials undergo TT. The CEC directly addresses SRP Mandate #4 (i.e., methods to reduce the amount and toxicity of hazardous substances). In addition to a new environmental health literacy project, we have designed the LSU Clean Air Research Engagement for Superfund Communities (LaCARES). We will work with two communities: Colfax, LA, home to a TT facility for Superfund and other hazardous wastes, and the Superfund community of Alsen, LA where TT of hazardous wastes was conducted. Residents of these communities also face environmental justice (EJ) challenges. We will develop a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) program in close collaboration with Projects 3 and 4. The CEC, SRP researchers, and trainees will work to increase understanding of EPFRs and develop prevention/intervention strategies in partnership with the communities. We will develop a new interactive air-quality website and mobile phone app (LouiSA?Louisiana State University Superfund Research Center Air Quality). Through this app, residents will be able to record, upload, and share their observations concerning air quality, odors, and physical symptoms that they experience. The residents? observations will be reported by the app, which will eventually incorporate measurements from the monitors deployed in Project 3. The community-based monitoring (consisting of input from residents about where to deploy air monitors and uploading of results and individual observations of air quality) will serve to validate smaller, inexpensive monitoring kits being developed by Project 4 to be deployed by the residents through the CEC. We will work collaboratively with residents to identify actions they may take that mitigate exposure risks, such as limiting outdoor activities, running air conditioners, and including more antioxidant nutrients in their diets. Finally, the CEC will help residents prepare comments for meetings with regulators so that they may participate more effectively in collective decisions about the treatment of hazardous materials in their communities. These collaborative activities?selecting locations to be monitored, recording observations, and selecting mitigation strategies?will help enhance the health resilience of these communities, and could be applied to other EJ localities.
Community Engagement Core (CEC) The new CEC consists of two major initiatives: the LSU Clean Air Research Engagement for Superfund Communities (LaCARES) and the LSU SRP Environmental Health Literacy Project. LaCARES is a CBPR program wherein residents of two communities where TT of hazardous materials has been conducted share their observations and work with Center researchers to help select locations for new field samplers to detect and assess exposures to EPFRs. The LSU SRP Environmental Health Literacy Project will include bidirectional engagement with Superfund communities where TT may be used as a site-remediation method and an annual break-out meeting during the Dellinger Symposium for community leaders, regulators, industry representatives, and researchers to explore best practices for CBPR and exposure-reducing strategies for EJ communities.
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