Wadsworth Center's Human Health and Exposure Analysis Resource (WC-HHEAR)

Parsons, Patrick; Kannan, Kurunthachalam

Abstract

? OVERALL The proposed Wadsworth Center Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (WC-HHEAR): Targeted Exposure Analysis Laboratory leverages access to a well-established targeted biomonitoring laboratory based at Wadsworth, which is recognized internationally as a world class public health laboratory and research institute. Wadsworth has developed significant capability and capacity for the targeted analyses required to help HHEAR become a success and has added experience from having been one of the six CHEAR laboratory hubs. The proposed WC-HHEAR resource is led by two MPIs with over 65 years of combined experience analyzing biospecimens for organic and inorganic targets, and who have collaborated together and with other researchers for two decades to advance our understanding of environmental exposures and human health; their collective contributions amount to over 700 published papers in the field of exposure measurements. The Administrative Core will provide an effective infrastructure and the support to ensure that WC-HHEAR is well-integrated into the Wadsworth?s Division of Environmental Health Sciences. Staff from the Administrative Core will work to confirm the day-to-day lab hub operations are smooth, and that excellent communications are maintained within the hub, and between the hub, the other HHEAR components, and with HHEAR clients. The proposed WC-HHEAR Targeted Analysis Resource (TAR), which is at the heart of this proposal, offers extensive capabilities that extend over 30 chemical classes, and hundreds of individual targets, and in many different biological tissues and fluids. The benefit to HHEAR clients includes multiple pre-and-post analytical consultations with experienced laboratory staff and subject matter experts that have reputations for high-quality analytical work. The TAR will also leverage the experience and capability that Wadsworth brings as an international provider of proficiency testing and as a producer of well-characterized biological reference materials that will help ensure the harmonization of data reported by laboratories world-wide for trace elements and trace organics in biological matrices. The WC-HHEAR Development Core will work to advance existing methods to improve efficiency, and achieve lower limits of detection, while working with increasingly smaller sample masses/volumes. The Development Core will also work to extend our capabilities in non-traditional matrices, increasing the number of targets measured and in many more matrices. Additionally, WC-HHEAR will adapt to the challenges ahead, whether driven by discoveries in the untargeted resource, or from HHEAR clients requesting increased throughput for our established assays.

Public Health Relevance

The Wadsworth Center?s Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (WC-HHEAR) will capitalize on Wadsworth?s strengths and extensive capabilities as a world class public health laboratory and research institute by providing NIH-funded researchers with access to state-of-the-art analytical facilities. Collaborations with NIH- funded researchers via HHEAR will leverage access to Wadsworth?s analytical expertise to provide high quality, accurate, measurements for a broad range of environmental contaminants in human biospecimens with the broader goal of advancing knowledge of environmental health issues at all life stages.