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Environews NIEHS News

National ToxicologyProgram: Landmarksand the Road AheadThe National Toxicology Program (NTP),a cross-agency unit of the Department ofHealth and Human Services (DHHS), isone of the focal points for governmentefforts aimed at generating, collecting, andcoordinating data used for guiding publichealth decisions. Now 25 years old, theNTP is in the middle of a strategic plan-ning effort to define how it will integratenew technologies with classical toxicologi-cal approaches to continue providing,according to the NTP’s motto, “good sci-ence for good decisions.”

In its current form, the NTP integratesactivities from the NIEHS, the NationalInstitute for Occupational Safety andHealth (NIOSH), and theFood and Drug Admin-istration (FDA) NationalCenter for Toxicological

Research (NCTR). Its mission is to evalu-ate agents of public health concern bydeveloping and applying tools of moderntoxicology and molecular biology, a mis-sion it achieves through the use of severalstrategies. It designs studies on potentialtoxicants and works with outside groupsand government labs to carry them out. Itreviews and evaluates what’s missing inunderstanding environmentally induceddiseases. It then seeks to fill those gaps bycollaborating and cooperating with federalagencies and with other domestic and for-eign toxicology and public health organi-zations, and by carrying out research itselfon human exposure and toxicity at labora-tories housed at NIOSH and the NIEHS.It supports grants, contracts, and intera-gency agreements made through theNIEHS Division of Extramural Researchand Training, and it supports the activitiesof three centers.

The se a c t i v i t i e s havebrought immense gains inknowledge for the scientificcommunity. But there is more

work still to do. Since the fall of 2003, theNTP has been engaged in developing andseeking public comment on a “roadmap”to guide the program’s route forward overthe next decade. The roadmap seeks tobuild on recent technological advancesthat will allow toxicology to evolve from alargely observational science to one that ismore predictive, and thus in many waysmore protective of public health.

The Journey BeginsThe NTP’s roots reach to the late 1960s,when concerns over the effects of environ-mental chemicals on human health beganto grow among scientists, policy makers,public health officials, and the generalpublic. Books like Silent Spring began todescribe the relationship betweenhumankind and the rest of the world asdange rous l yout of balance.The growth ofthe environ-mental move-ment in this

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decade led to greater public awareness ofnatural resources and the potentiallyharmful effects of environmental pollu-tion. As law makers and the public becameincreasingly concerned about unforeseeneffects of chemicals all around us—partic-ularly those used in manufacturing, agri-culture, and household products such ascleaners—new scientific and regulatoryapproaches were enacted to better under-stand these agents and decrease or elimi-nate human exposure to harmful agents.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, newagencies were formed and responsibilitieswithin existing agencies were realigned inefforts to understand, classify, and/or reg-ulate compounds of concern. The Tox-icology Information Program at theNational Library of Medicine began gath-ering toxicological information and com-piling data banks to allow searching andcomparison of the assembled material.The NIEHS, which wasestablished in 1966 andbecame a full NIH insti-tute in 1969, started a

laboratory focused specifically on neuro-toxicology in 1977, and in the same yearhosted one of the first conferences onenvironmental estrogens. The Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) wasfounded in 1970 to pull environmentaland health protection activities from acrossthe government into one administrativeunit. The FDA took on licensing authorityfor new biological therapeutic agents buttransferred its responsibility for oversightof potentially hazardous materials andother dangers in home items (such as toys,furniture, clothing, and household chemi-cal products) to the Consumer ProductSafety Commission (CPSC), which wasestablished in 1972.

In November 1978, Joseph Califano,secretary of the Department of Health,Education, and Welfare (the predecessorof today’s DHHS), established the NTP asa cooperative and coordinating effort

between agencies involvedin public health. The pro-gram was sea ted a t theNIEHS and placed under

the leadership of then–NIEHS directorDavid Rall. Kenneth Olden assumeddirectorship of both the NIEHS and theNTP in 1991. Despite this link, the NTPwas and remains independent of the insti-tute and of NIH.

The new program’s charge includedcoordinating toxicological testing pro-grams within public health agencies;strengthening the scientific basis of toxi-cology; developing and validating newassays and improved testing methods; andproviding information about potentiallytoxic chemicals to health, regulatory, andresearch agencies across the government,to the scientific and medical communities,and to the general public.

Strengthening the Scientific Basis ofToxicologyAmong its earliest activities, the NTPbegan collecting data from work going onacross federal agencies; by 1980 it hadgenerated a database comparing the resultsgained from a variety of widely used geno-toxicity assays. By the end of that year, theprogram had issued its first Report onCarcinogens (ROC), a scientific and publichealth document identifying substances,mixtures, and circumstances of exposurethat may lead to human cancers. TheROC has been updated periodically sincethen, and the eleventh edition is scheduledfor release late in 2004.

In 1983, the NTP first developed andbegan using five standard categories tosummarize the strengths of experimentaldata produced by its own laboratories andthose of other agencies and industry instudies of chemical or physical agents.Four categories are based on a scale ofconfidence that ranges from “clear evi-dence” to “no evidence” of harm; a fifthjudges that evidence amounts to an “inad-equate study.” The standardization helpedmake the program’s long-term toxicityreports—which can form the basis for pol-icy recommendations on acceptable expo-

sure levels and use of chemicals—more consistent across the range ofagents and exposures studied. So,for example, when the State ofCalifornia passed Proposition 65,the Safe Drinking Water and ToxicEnforcement Act of 1986, NTPdata from the ROC were availableto help the state set standards fordischarge of potentially harmful

agents into drinking water. By 1987, theNTP’s standardized categorization hadbeen used to classify conclusions from ear-lier federal studies of potential hazards,allowing the older information to be inte-grated into current data sets. C

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In a paper in the 22 May 1987 issue ofScience, the NTP published the first com-prehensive evaluation of genotoxicityassays, laying the groundwork for a moresystematic approach to developing andvalidating new in vitro assays. At the sametime, the program developed a battery oftests for assessing chemically inducedimmunotoxicity. As the 1980s drew to aclose, the NTP began developing trans-genic mouse models for toxicology andcarcinogenicity testing, a new approachthat would allow easier detection of endpoints such as tumors. (The NTP has con-tinued to investigate the development oftransgenic animals as research tools, and in2003 launched a new technical reportseries to convey the findings from trans-genic model systems.)

Revving Up in the 1990s The 1990s saw the NTP embark on a seriesof new directions. One new effort, thePredictive-Toxicology Evaluation Project,was launched in 1990. Designed to usechemical structures for direct prediction ofbioassay outcomes, the project published itsfirst results in the October 1996 issue ofEHP Supplements. Another new focusevolved in 1992, when the FDA and theNIEHS formed an interagency agreementto coordinate and jointly fund a phototoxi-cology research facility at the NCTR inJefferson, Arkansas. Existing laboratoryspace at that facility was renovated in 1998and 1999 to form a dedicated NTP Centerfor Phototoxicology. The center works toaddress the carcinogenic potential of chem-icals when they are exposed to light orapplied to photo-treated skin.

The NIH Revitalization Act of 1993required that the NIH focus more on devel-oping methods that lessen the use ofresearch animals, reduce pain and distress inanimals used, or avoid using animals alto-gether. In 1997 Olden put together a cross-agency panel, the Interagency CoordinatingCommittee on the Validation of AlternativeMethods (ICCVAM), to implement theact’s requirements. The committee wasmade permanent in 2000 with the passageof the ICCVAM Authorization Act. TheNTP Interagency Center for the Evaluationof Alternative Toxicological Methods wasfounded in 1998 at the NIEHS to providesupport for ICCVAM’s activities by holdingworkshops and meetings, and by generatingreports. Through their efforts, the first alter-native test acceptable to the EPA, the FDA,and the Occupational Safety and HealthAdministration, one for allergic contact der-matitis, was established, significantlydecreasing the number of animals tested forthis end point.

Through the 1990s, emerging publicinterests led the NTP in new pursuits.With the passage of the 1994 DietarySupplement Health and Education Act,the NTP began looking at the potential fortoxicity and carcinogenicity of selecteddietary supplements, medicinal herbs, andthe compounds within them. The ROCalso saw some changes. The report was puton a biennial publication schedule in1993. The NTP’s nominations process, bywhich federal and nongovernmental enti-ties can recommend agents for testing, wasmade clearer and more open to publicscrutiny. In addition, new criteria allowingbroader consideration of mechanistic datawere added to the ROC.

A third NTP center, the Center forthe Evaluation of Risks to Human Repro-duction, was established at the NIEHS in1998. The center provides scientificallybased uniform assessments of the poten-tial for reproductive and developmentaldamage from human exposure to certaintoxicants. Expert panels convened by thecenter evaluate evidence of reproductivetoxicity, determine patterns of chemicaluse and human exposure, and develop sci-entific consensus around tested agents’capacity to harm humans.

NTP workshops, conferences, andreports in recent years have covered abroad range of emerging and continuingtoxicological issues. The program hasaddressed exposures of concern such asmethylmercury, acrylamide, and geneti-cally modified foods. Researchers havedeveloped and validated technical meth-ods for assessing human exposures, per-forming dermal exposure studies in ani-mals, and detecting endocrine disruptors.And the program has brought researcherstogether to build scientific consensus onissues including how thyroid hormoneaffects reproduction, approaches to select-ing agents to study in transgenic mousemodels, and assessment of acute systemictoxicity.

Establishing a Roadmap for theFutureIn 2003, the NTP began to look at how itcould better position its activities to takeadvantage of new technologies and addressa broader range of toxicological end points.“The NTP has been in existence for twen-ty-five years,” says Christopher Portier,associate director of the program. “It wastime to look at what we’re doing anddecide if it’s still the right thing.”

In fall 2003, the NTP’s advisory Boardof Scientific Counselors (BSC) developedand approved a vision statement: “to sup-port the evolution of toxicology from a

predominantly observational science at thelevel of disease-specific models to a pre-dominantly predictive science focusedupon a broad inclusion of target-specific,mechanism-based, biological observa-tions.” Three workgroups—one from theNIEHS, one representing all of the federalagencies served by the NTP, and one thatwas a subcommittee of the BSC—thencontributed comments on what it wouldtake to make the vision a reality. Theircomments were incorporated into arevised statement, which the NTP releasedto the public in late 2003. At the sametime, the NTP announced a year-longprocess to develop and seek public com-ment on a “roadmap” for achieving thevision.

The NTP’s effort is not a part of, butrather complements, NIH’s recently com-pleted Roadmap for Medical Research.The latter roadmap was aimed at identify-ing critical gaps and opportunities in bio-medical research that do not fit clearlyinto the mission of any of the memberinstitutes.

The process of developing the NTProadmap has been very open: the visionand roadmap were discussed at a publicmeeting at the NIH’s Bethesda campus inJanuary 2004; at a meeting of the NTP’sScientific Advisory Committee on Alter-native Toxicological Methods held inMarch; at a meeting of leading toxicolo-gists held the same month at the conclu-sion of the Society of Toxicology’s annualmeeting; at the June meeting of the BSC;and at a retreat with advisors, stakeholders,and federal agency staff in August.

Those commenting were asked toaddress what information the NTP shouldbe producing and what technical capacitiesit should have at different points over thenext 10 years; how refinement and replace-ment of classical toxicological studies withmechanism-based assays will affect theevaluation of public health hazards; howthe NTP can best be structured to providethis information and ensure its optimalutilization in the protection of publichealth; and what resources and length oftime will be needed to realize this vision.

Early on, says Mark Toraason, aNIOSH representative to the interagencycommittee providing input on theroadmap, the vision focused solely on turn-ing toxicology on its head by moving itfrom an observational science to a predic-tive science. But because of perceived limi-tations, the vision did not get immediatebuy-in from all stakeholders. “It was like,‘Wait a minute, it may be NTP that gener-ates that data, but it’s other governmentagencies that use it. The other government

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agencies should be indicating what theyneed, and NTP should meet those needs,’”says Toraason. “There has been a meetingof the minds there, and the roadmap hasbeen modified with the recognition put inthat the needs of the other governmentagencies can continue to be met as thevision is attained.”

Short-term goals (to be accomplishedin the next five years) include a number ofworkshops to set priorities and workingstrategies. Basic study design, from choiceof model organism strain and species toduration of experiments, will be re-evalu-ated, and gaps where current studydesigns or the current knowledge base fallshort will be addressed. NTP staff andadvisors will interact with policy makersto build better tools for analyzing risksand setting standards. Proof-of-principlestudies will be conducted with new andrevamped assays, and new data infrastruc-ture and data management tools will bebuilt. Work toward improving the NTP’suse of high-throughput screening willinclude cataloguing approaches being usedin the public domain and applying theseassays to more than 500 agents that havealready gone through the full two-yearbioassay that is the NTP’s current goldstandard.

Long-term goals (to be accomplishedover the next 10 years) are ambitious—val-idating the use of new kinds of assays forregulatory decision making, prioritizingcompounds for toxicity testing, evaluatinghuman relevance, and addressing specificdiseases. In the long run, the NTP aims todevelop and validate a battery of predictivetests and a systematic understanding of themetabolism of toxicants. The plan alsocalls for banking tissue samples from NTPstudies and panels of tested agents, whichwould be available to the extramuralresearch community by 2010.

Wheels of ChangeWith rapidly developing technologies cre-ating new opportunities for doing betterscience faster, application of high-throughput approaches—including whole-genome analysis and work that builds ongenomic data—is a critical part of theroadmap. These new approaches showgreat promise for solving a central prob-lem: the sheer volume of chemicals thatmust be characterized and tested. Variousestimates put the number of chemicals incommerce in the tens of thousands;Portier says such estimates are almost cer-tainly an understatement. “We can’t possi-bly test everything,” he says. EPA scientistand Society of Toxicology president LindaBirnbaum puts it another way: “We can’t

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Headliners Maternal Nutrition and Child CancerNIEHS-Supported Research

Mother’s Pre-pregnancy Diet May Influence Child Cancer Risk

Jensen CD, Block G, Buffler P, Ma X, Selvin S, Month S. 2004. Maternal dietary risk fac-tors in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (United States). Cancer Causes Control15(6):559–570.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common childhood cancer(with 2,400 cases diagnosed each year in those under age 20) and the secondmost common cause of mortality in children aged 1–14. Recent research hasconfirmed that ALL can originate in utero. New findings from the NIEHS-funded Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study (NCCLS) show that thedisease may originate even earlier—in the foods a woman eats before sheeven becomes pregnant.

The effect of maternal diet on child leukemia risk has not been rigorous-ly studied; the few studies that have been done have focused on specificdietary factors, and the results have been mixed. The NCCLS is a population-based case–control study of risk factors for child leukemia, including maternaldiet. It is the first study to capture mothers’ overall dietary patterns and relatethem to child leukemia.

Researchers compared 138 mothers of children diagnosed with ALL witha control group of 138 mothers whose children did not have cancer. All themothers completed a questionnaire pertaining to their diet in the 12 monthsprior to pregnancy. The researchers chose this period as a more accuratereflection of each woman’s typical diet, compared to pregnancy, when dietcan vary with the degree of nausea experienced. The questionnaire askedabout 76 food items, plus use of vitamins, certain reduced-fat foods, andcooking fat.

The researchers found that the more vegetables, fruits, and proteins awoman ate, the lower the risk of her child having leukemia. Of the vegetablesand fruits, carrots and cantaloupe showed the highest inverse effect, perhapsbecause of these foods’ high carotenoid content. String beans and peas alsocorrelated inversely with ALL risk. Among the proteins, beef and beans—bothsources of the antioxidant glutathione—showed the highest inverse effect.Use of vitamin supplements was not significantly linked to leukemia risk.

The authors stress that dietary factors work together, and no one foodshould be singled out in attributing risk or benefit. Further, a cause-and-effect relationship can not be concluded from this study. However, theywrite, it remains prudent for women who are pregnant or think they maybecome pregnant to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. –Susan M. Booker

keep doing more and more and more testson more and more and more chemicals.We have to be able to test smarter, notnecessarily more.”

“I think we can double, triple, quadru-ple, tenfold the number of things we lookat if we’re intelligent about how weapproach it,” Portier says. He explains usingan example from the world of industry: “Indeveloping a new drug, the pharmaceuticalindustry scans a very large number of chem-ical entities in some very simple assays.From that, they choose a smaller set thatthey test in medium-throughput assays, andfrom that they choose one or two that theytest in animals. That’s the direction I wantto see us going.”

But moving in new directions isn’teasy, and incorporating new technologiesinto the NTP’s suite of well-acceptedassays provides one of the biggest chal-lenges. “One of the problems with devel-oping totally new methods is when you dosomething new, it has to be replicated,which means that the expertise and thework have to be going on in a number ofdifferent laboratories,” says GeorgeDaston, a research fellow at Procter andGamble and member of the BSC.

Validation of the assays developedaround new technologies will be critical.“The technology is quite enticing and it’srazzle-dazzle, but we always have to be ableto bring it back to the reality of biologyand what it means for the whole organism,and especially what it means for humanrisk,” says Samuel Cohen, a professor atthe University of Nebraska Medical Centerin Omaha and BSC member. “This needsto be an evolutionary process rather than arevolutionary process.”

Reduction, refinement, and replace-ment of animal use may be one of the areaswhere this evolution first appears.Currently the NTP favors the two-yearanimal bioassay as its assay of choice. Yetadding more analyses to the experimentscurrently being done could help, saysCohen: “There is a considerable amountthat can be gained, not only from the ani-mals during the two-year process, but alsoin the preliminary studies—the four-weekand thirteen-week studies that are doneahead of time—that could be of more pre-dictive value, so that we didn’t have to doas much in the two-year study ultimately,if at all.”

All for One and One for AllData sharing will help bring stakeholderstogether. The NTP intends to eventuallymake its chronic assay database and otherdatabases publicly available, which Tor-aason says will help with communication,

not just to the public but also across federalagencies. “In the past it could be difficult toget information from NTP at times,” heexplains. “You needed a reliable contactand had to know who knew what and soon. Now their website contains a wealth ofsearchable information, and the intent is toincrease the amount of information that ispublicly available.”

The extramural research communitywill have access to all these public data andcan expect to play new roles if theroadmap is put in place, but it’s not yetclear how they will be involved. “Wetalked about a large number of possibili-ties,” Portier says, “from providing theextramural community with NTP tissuesfrom NTP studies to do their ownresearch, to providing them with arrays ofchemicals if someone has their own high-throughput facility, to setting up centersfor doing toxicological screenings towardmechanisms, and a number of other differ-ent possibilities.”

The work of extramural scientists willbe needed and appreciated. “We don’thave all the answers, we don’t know howto analyze all the data, we don’t knowwhat it all means, and I’m not sure I havethe staff on hand to do all that,” Portiersays. “The only way it’s going to actuallyhappen is if the public has access to thedata. It’s going to be scientists at universi-ties who come out and get NIEHS grantsto analyze our data and give us some inter-pretation tools that really lead that effort.”

James Popp, a BSC member andcofounder of the consulting groupStratoxon, has worked in academe, govern-ment, and industry. He says there’s amuch greater openness among those threerealms to talking and working togetherthan he’s seen in a long time. “There’sbeen this mind-set change, and I thinkthat’s important to opening up these dia-logues,” he says. “We’re in an era of veryrapid technological changes, and so it’s amatter of capturing that opportunity ofmind-set changes, technology changes, andnew advancements in basic knowledge ofbiology.”

This greater accord between sectorsraises some concerns, though, according toJennifer Sass, a senior scientist for theNatural Resources Defense Council, anenvironmental advocacy group. “The colle-gial familiarity that’s being set up leads to alot of questions,” she says. “The problem isthat industry clearly sees a triangle includ-ing government, academia, and them-selves, and there is no public interest, nopublic watchdog groups, in the picture.”

Other opinions vary. “NTP has done agood job of informing just about everybody

in the scientific community about whatthey’re doing. They have listened to thecriticisms, and have expanded the visionaccordingly,” Toraason says.

Still, the public does need to beinformed, says Popp, and that will takebetter efforts at communications. “Thereare multiple audiences,” he explains.“Obviously, there’s the political audience,but it’s more than that—it’s a broadersoc ie ta l audience that needs to beaddressed, and the general public does nothave a good grasp of basic scientific princi-ples in toxicology or anything else. Sothere’s a very large educational process thatneeds to go along with the scientific workin the roadmap.”

The Road AheadThe roadmap sets an ambitious course forthe next decade. But is it achievable? “[TheNTP has] to recognize that what they putout is a vision, very broad and somewhatall-encompassing,” says Michael Hol-sapple, executive director of the Healthand Environmental Sciences Institute ofthe International Life Sciences Institute, anindustry-funded nonprofit that works toenhance the scientific basis for publichealth decision making. Holsapple recom-mends “partnering, being judicious, andrecognizing that their map is a good firststep.” But in reality, he says, “when therubber hits the road, they can’t do it all.”

Portier sees it differently. “Partnershipswill be an important part of the initiativesoutlined in the roadmap,” he says. “Whilethe NTP has the budget necessary toaddress all of the aspects of the roadmap, itwill require a concerted effort from all ofthe NTP stakeholders to develop the toolsthat will allow us to understand and usethis new information in addressing publichealth priorities.”

Everything could change with thearrival of a new director. Olden hasannounced he will leave his positions asNTP and NIEHS director in the nearfuture, though he will continue to serveuntil his successor is appointed. “If thenew director comes in and doesn’t like[our plan], then we sit down and thinkabout where we’re going to go and howwe’re going to get there based upon his orher vision of what the NTP should bedoing,” Portier says. “But the advice we’vegotten is still excellent advice, and it willhelp to chart whatever course we eventual-ly take.” –Victoria McGovern

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For More Information

http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/

Problems along theNew “Silk Road”The inexpensive sweater you buy in NewJersey, the bargain dresser you buy inWisconsin, and the low-cost toys you buyin Ohio all have one thing in common:most likely they were made in Asia, andchances are they entered the United Statesthrough a Southern California port.These consumer goods may be easy onthe pocketbook, and thriving internation-al trade may be good for the economy,but the environment is seeing some seri-ous impacts. Today the NIEHS-fundedSouthern California EnvironmentalHealth Sciences Center (SCEHSC) isworking to raise awareness about theseimpacts. The center is a partnershipbetween investigators at the University ofSouthern California and the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles.

The adjacent twin ports of LosAngeles and Long Beach have become theworld’s third largest port complex, flood-ing the region with imported cargo con-tainers, which are transportedby big-rig diesel trucks andby ships and freight trainsoperating on low-grade fuel.The booming trade has madethe ports the region’s num-ber-one source of air pollu-tion. And the ports keepgrowing, creating a need forexpanded freeways and largerintermodal facilities wherecontainers are moved fromtrucks onto trains.

Emissions from foreign-flagged ships (nearly all shipsentering the two ports) arecurrently unregulated, consti-tuting a major concern forresidents in the port commu-nities. Residents along truck-congested freeways and railroutes are also impacted.“We have homes and parksright next to the rail yard,”says Angelo Logan, directorof the grassroots organizationEast Yard Communities forEnvironmental Justice, “andsometimes locomotives idlehere for hours.”

The SCEHSC, spurred bycommunity concerns raised

at a 2001 Town Meeting it sponsored,has been dedicating significant attentionto these global trade impacts. Throughthe center’s Community Outreach andEducation Program, center investigatorsand outreach staff are raising awareness ofthe need to reduce trade-related air pollu-tion and better protect residents from thesurge in such pollution.

Center investigators andoutreach staff have present-ed data to elected officialson air pollution’s respi-ratory effects on chil-dren. Among these arethe results of the 10-year longitudinal Chil-dren’s Health Study(directed by SCEHSCdirector John Peter s ) ,which shows a larger propor-tion of children in more pollutedcommunities suffering lung functiondeficits, with lifelong health significance.Staff have also testified on the health effectsof exposure to diesel exhaust at hearings toban idling of diesel trucks at the ports, totriple the capacity of a freeway that goesthrough dozens of low-income, primarilyLatino communities, and to construct hugetrucking distribution centers in Riverside,one of the country’s most polluted cities.

Center member Ed Avol serves as anappointee to the Mayor of Los Angeles’special task force on port emissions,which was convened in October 2004.The center recently published a policybrief looking at the need to place a higherpriority on health when key developmentdecisions are made—for example, in

regards to expansion of ports, railyards, freeways, or warehouses.

And center member JohnFroines and outreach directorAndrea Hricko discussedthe impacts of global tradeon local communities atthe November 2003 round-table discussion “Global-

ization, International Trade,and Environmental Health,”

sponsored by the Instituteof Medicine of the National

Academies.Center staff are also working directly

with community members, for exampleby taking high school and college studentson tours of the ports and teaching themhow to take ultrafine particle measure-ments. The center is also cosponsoring aTown Meeting in February 2005 with atheme of “Local and Regional HealthImpacts of the Ports and Global Trade.”–Andrea M. Hricko

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The high price of cheap goods. Container ships bring inexpensive goods from around the world into the Port of LosAngeles, but the pollution caused by transportation of these goods by ship, truck, and train has human health costs.