NEWS
West Virginia University School of Medicine
New WVU program trains next generation of toxicologists to collect and analyze air samples from mining , fracking sites
West Virginia University ( WVU ) is launching a toxicology training program that offers students something no other academic program does : experience collecting air samples , identifying the toxicants they contain , and determining how those toxicants might harm a community ’ s health .
The National Institutes of Health has awarded WVU $ 1.7 million for the program , which bridges the disciplines of toxicology and systems-based medicine — disciplines that are traditionally distinct from one another .
Over five years , the 40 doctoral students who participate will collect air samples in the local environment and then re-aerosolize and analyze them in WVU ’ s inhalation facility to assess their toxicity .
“ With colleagues in the School of Public Health , they ’ re going to do what we refer to as environmental immersions ,” said Timothy
Nurkiewicz , who directs the facility and chairs the School of Medicine ’ s department of physiology and pharmacology . “ They go out into the field downwind of mountaintop mining sites or fracking platforms , and they sample the air in real time . They can actually collect those samples , bring them back for inhalation exposures , and perform their studies like that . That ’ s something no other program in the country has .”
The inhalation facility provides a tightly controlled environment where researchers , both faculty and students alike , can replicate the inhalation exposures that people face in occupational , environmental , and personal settings . These replications make it possible to carry out experiments that reveal the exposures ’ dose limits , health effects , and mechanisms of toxicity .
The program ’ s participants will use the inhalation facility to investigate how inhaling various toxins can harm the respiratory , cardiovascular , nervous , endocrine , reproductive , and other systems .
“ One of my big concerns with modern science is that students are largely studying cells and molecules on a very constrained scale ,”
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