Research Areas

Prenatal and early childhood exposure to environmental toxicants contributes to the growing rate of neurodevelopmental disorders. However, little is known about the mechanistic processes by which environmental chemicals alter brain development. Neuroimaging techniques (e.g., volumetric and functional MRI, diffusor tensor imaging, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy) provide unprecedented access to study the developing human brain in vivo. By combining these techniques with exposure data and prospective cohort designs, our research has begun to determine how the environment shapes structural and functional patterns in the developing brain. This knowledge can be further combined with functional behavioral and cognitive tasks allowing us to investigate how prenatal exposure to environmental toxicants may alter the typical neurodevelopmental trajectory of brain and behavioral outcomes.

For decades, toxicology studies and human health risk assessments focused on the effects of single chemicals on human health. Scientists now recognize that we are exposed to complex mixtures of environmental chemicals every day and throughout our lifetimes. We encounter these mixtures through the air we breathe, the food and water we consume, and the products we use in our home or on our bodies. These complex chemical mixtures may have greater effects on our health than each chemical would alone. For example, exposure to ozone and aldehydes, which are components of smog, produces greater health effects than would be predicted based on each chemical alone.

In modern societies, humans are exposed to a wide spectrum of environmental chemicals. Studies to investigate the prevalence, timing and intensity of exposures serve to direct efforts at remediation, mitigation, control, and risk assessment as well as to inform environmental epidemiology studies. Relevant exposure information in both unique and general populations is required to understand associations between exposure and health outcomes. Our research focuses on incorporating novel laboratory and analytical aspects of method development in epidemiologic studies. For example, proposed use of well-established multi-media biomarkers with novel teeth biomarkers of metal exposure throughout childhood allows the identification of novel exposure-health outcome relationships, specifically the identification of critical windows of vulnerability.

The impact of exposure can be delayed by years (i.e., latencies), so timing of exposure matters as much as the dose. Though often costly and lengthy, prospective birth cohort studies are the ideal design to study the impact of chemicals on child development and health. It is increasingly understood that exposure to some environmental factors jeopardizes children’s health and might relate to the surges in environmentally related diseases, such as asthma, obesity, and neurodevelopmental disorders such autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Our research has identified disproportionate environmental health risks for children through longitudinal birth cohort studies of environmental exposures and children’s health. In our current and future studies, we propose moving beyond associations of environmental exposures and cognition and expanding to other neurologic phenomena including motor and emotional outcomes.