BUSRP Ask the Researcher Forum

Ask the Researcher

Ask the Researcher is a valuable, interactive environmental health resource tool developed by the Boston University Superfund Research Program and Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility to help bring "research to real life" by allowing readers to pose questions and have them answered by researchers involved in the BUSRP.

There are currently four researchers to whom you may pose a question:

Dr. Tom Webster is an epidemiologist at BU School of Public Health and the Principal Investigator on Project 2: Analyzing Patterns in Epidemiologic and Toxicologic Data.

Geographic Information Systems now allow the use of analytic techniques in spatial epidemiology previously not feasible. As a result the mapping of routinely collected health data is now common and often provokes concern when patterns of disease rates appear to have "hot spots," although it is well understood by epidemiologists that the results may be biased by failure to collect and control for many known risk factors that are unevenly distributed over the area of the map. Dr. Webster's team is working to develop improved methods for mapping epidemiologic data on reproductive and developmental outcomes while adjusting for known risk factors.

Jennifer Schlezinger, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Health in BU's School of Public Health. She currently investigates how aromatic hydrocarbons (by-products of combustion) and phthalate esters (plasticizers used in manufacturing polyvinyl chloride) cause death in antibody-producing cells within the bone marrow microenvironment.

Dr. Ann Aschengrau is an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her current research looks at whether prenatal and childhood exposures to drinking water contaminated with tetrachloroethylene (PCE) have caused disease in adults living on Cape Cod.

Mark Hahn is a biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His current research concerns mechanisms of adaptation and evolved resistance to PCBs in fish inhabiting a Superfund site in southeastern Massachusetts.

Please visit the Ask the Researcher web page to see a more complete profile on each of the three researchers, as well as the answers given to questions others have already posed.

If you have a question for any of the scientists, please email it to BUSRP's Outreach Staff

Learn more about all the Boston University Superfund Research Program Projects