The Laboratories Administration, like many other state public health laboratories, is still seeking additional resources to further develop its capabilities and capacities for radiological food safety and surveillance monitoring. Maryland?s Public Health Laboratory is designated as an LRN Level 2 Lab. This cooperative agreement would support the national program goals and that of Maryland?s emergency radiological food testing and surveillance program. It would a l s o provide the only routine radiological lab services within 90 miles of Baltimore and the National Capital Region, a region with a population of over 6MM people. It is home to one of the largest sea- and airport in the Nation and, by surrounding the District of Columbia on three sides, includes a major portion of the National Capital Region. Maryland faces a range of radiological challenges, both man-made and naturally occurring that can manifest themselves in our food supply. It presents significant challenges for food protection with an intimate mix of urban and rural environments and activities. It has one nuclear power plant at Calvert Cliffs and one nuclear power plant on its border with Pennsylvania at Peach Bottom. Additionally, the central and eastern half of the State lies within the ingestion pathway zones of three nuclear power plants. In terms of naturally occurring sources, western Maryland sits upon the Marcellus Shale formation that runs along the western panhandle of the State joining West Virginia and Pennsylvania, a known source of radioactivity which is also a potential fracking site for natural gas recovery. The Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay has a potential issue with radon and other radionuclides released from the aquifers that are used to provide irrigation water in Maryland. The State has both a significant ethnic population of diverse cultural backgrounds and a regular high level of both international and interstate travelers. Recognizing the risk to the state?s residents due to the potential impacts to our drinking water and food supply, we need to establish baseline data by conducting environmental surveillance monitoring for radiation from various agricultural, mining, and manufacturing communities where there is potentially the risk of exposure to environmental radiological hazards. The Laboratories Administration has chosen a list of radiological compounds to detect and measure in food commodities that are of interest to Maryland. By this application, the Administration proposes to further develop and maintain a food safety and surveillance monitoring of food commodities for radiological contamination. In support of this cooperative agreement, the Laboratories Administration will focus a substantial portion of this proposal towards developing methods, willingly participate i n laboratory preparedness exercises, drills, and PTs, food emergency responses, obtain and maintain ISO 17025 accreditation for all tests utilized for this project, redirect routine testing when FERN is activated in order to better serve FERN?s mission, and allocate appropriate funding for staff to travel to training or conferences/meetings. The Administration further propose to develop and maintain this project by recruiting and hiring a contractual staff, purchase instrument and equipment, lab supplies, develop and implement a sampling plan, and conduct project evaluation and assessment. The Laboratories Administration proposes to carry out this project in Year 1 with a requested funding of $240,000 and continue in Years 2 through 5 with a budget of $960,000. 1
In September 2000, the Pew Environmental Health Commission at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released a report titled ?America?s Environmental Health Gap: Why the Country Needs a Nationwide Health Tracking Network.? This Commission documented the current state of knowledge about associative and casual links between contact with and exposure to environmental hazards and subsequent onset of undesirable health outcomes and chronic diseases. Maryland has high cancer rates, increasing infant mortality rates, high asthma prevalence rates, high levels of environmental hazards, and significant disparities in health conditions. Chemical exposures from many sources could be contributing to the risk of cancer and other chronic diseases in Maryland residents. The list of potential carcinogens includes metals, organic compounds, and radioactive elements, all of which can be found in Maryland. The highest priorities in Maryland for food safety and surveillance are metals, pesticides, and radiologicals. There are lots of agricultural products grown, harvested, and sold in Maryland to the general public without State, FDA or USDA scientific oversight. Equally important, there are a lot of imported foods sold in retail markets in Maryland that have not gone through scientific discovery both by the State and federal entities. The population at large could be potentially exposed to a plethora of contaminated food products from domestically grown and produced as well as imported. Because of Maryland?s strategic location in the National Capital Region, any potential disease or illness outbreaks from terrorist event or chemical emergencies could have an adverse effect on a very large population within a short period of time. The Division of Environmental Chemistry is an LRN Level 2 Chemistry Lab as well as ISO 17025 accredited through A2LA. To better address these environmental and infrastructure challenges, the Division of Environmental Chemistry will use this Cooperative Agreement to augment an existing array of instruments and methods to detect and measure potential contamination of radiological agents in food products and water resulting from environmental exposure in agricultural, mining, and manufacturing jurisdictions or during a terrorist, incidental, or intentional event within a short turnaround time while producing data which is accurate and legally defensible. The key objectives include but not limited to: develop, implement, maintain, and expand a target sampling plan to collect samples for testing to provide baseline measurements on the current radiation levels associated with basic crop commodities, both locally grown and imported products, and water supply; enhance the use of state-of-the-art technologies and methods to detect and identify the presence and concentration of designated radionuclides in our food and water supply; conduct epidemiological manipulation and modeling of radiological exposure baseline data to predict potential risk levels of hazards; provide surge capacity during a nationwide environmental radiation exposure assessment of our food and water supply; use reference database set to provide easy access for regulatory agencies, health care providers, researchers, public health officials, and the public to track specific exposure levels of radiation hazards especially for children, women of childbearing age, pregnant women, and other potentially vulnerable groups; and evaluate effectiveness of public health efforts to reduce residents? exposure to environmental radiation hazards through education, outreach, regulatory policy, and health alerts. The DHMH-Office of Food Protection will use the principles of risk management to highlight areas of greatest vulnerability in the food supply in Maryland and target food and food related products from these areas for sampling and analysis to provide radiological baseline exposure information and a vehicle to detect and manage change and threats.
