Mission

The goals of the UC Berkeley Superfund program are to improve understanding of the relationship between exposure and disease, provide better human and ecological risk assessments, and develop a range of prevention and remediation strategies to improve and protect public health, ecosystems and the environment. The program's themes are to: a) apply functional genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, and nanotechnology to better detect arsenic, mercury, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, trichloroethylene, and other Superfund priority chemicals in the environment; b) to evaluate their effects on human health, especially the health of susceptible populations such as children; c) remediate their presence; and d) reduce their toxicity.
 
UC Berkeley's program builds on the strengths of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in engineering, chemistry, and molecular epidemiology. The program consists of six interrelated projects (three with a biomedical research focus and three with a non-biomedical research focus) and five cores.
 
The major objectives are to:

1. Develop and apply novel biomarkers and exposure assessment tools in epidemiology studies [Project 1] [Project 3] [Project 5]
2. Enhance our knowledge of the toxic effects of arsenic, especially in early life [Project 3]
3. Determine the role of environmental exposure to benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the development of childhood leukemia [Project 1]
4. Identify genes that confer susceptibility to chemical toxicity through the application of functional genomics [Project 2]
5. Expand our ability to remediate toxic waste sites at a lower cost using nanotechnology and bioremediation [Project 4] [Project 6]
6. Improve our ability to measure chemical species in the environment using nanotechnology [Project 4] [Project 5]
7. Promote the exchange of information among scientists, regulators, and other interested parties in order to translate basic research finding into appropriate policies and public health interventions [Core B]
8. Move our research findings into application through technology transfer [Core B]
9. Provide training that is interdisciplinary and imparts skills in the translation of scientific results to a new generation of scientists in the many disciplines relevant to the Program [Core E]