Please contact Rose Branstrom (rbranstr@umich.edu) with any items that should be included in next month's M-LEEaD newsletter
I am happy to announce NIEHS has issued the M-LEEaD Center our Notice of Award for a new 5-year cycle! Thank you to the M-LEEaD community for your hard work and dedication to the center!
This renewal means our environmental health sciences core center can continue our important work improving the understanding of the contribution of environmental exposures toward the etiology of chronic diseases and throughout different lifestages. We are excited to re-energize the Center later this summer and fall and continue working on our mission!
Thank you for all your hard work and patience,
Dana Dolinoy, PhD
M-LEEaD Center Director
The Center Scientist positions provide special mentorship experiences for the selected early-stage investigators and include a contribution to salary and benefits. The Center Scientist is expected to engage in research that addresses the goals of the M-LEEaD Center to define, explain, or mitigate impacts of environmental exposures during vulnerable stages of life.
Eligible applicants can be current U of M postdoctoral trainees, research fellows, or junior faculty appointed as assistant research professor, clinical assistant professor, or assistant research scientist with less than two years in rank at UM. We strongly encourage faculty members of the M-LEEaD Center to identify and encourage eligible candidates to apply and to offer to provide a letter of support.
The due date for applications is July 25, 2022. For additional information see our website.
Middle-aged women with higher blood concentrations of common synthetic chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), also called "forever chemicals" and found in water, soil, air and food, were at greater risk of developing high blood pressure, compared to their peers who had lower levels of these substances, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal. "It's important to note that we examined individual PFAS as well as several PFAS together, and we found that the combined exposure to multiple PFAS had a stronger effect on blood pressure," said study senior author Sung Kyun Park. Read some of the coverage in Science Daily, Endocrinology Network, Grist, Sustainability Times, and Health Day.
John Meeker is one of the study co-authors- he says the study shows that Hispanic women and other women of color and those of lower socioeconomic status and education had higher concentrations of multiple pesticides and parabens “consistent with prior evidence that chemical exposures are frequently higher among women of color."
Read some of the coverage in the University of Michigan News, Click on Detroit, Futurity, and Michigan Today.
The economic, health, and social toll of environmental racism is profound. Disproportionate and systemic excess exposure of communities of color to multiple pollutants in the soil, water, and air is exceptionally well documented, as are the contributions of those pollutants to longstanding racial inequities in length and quality of life. The environmental justice movement arose in response to environmental racism. It centers on disproportionately impacted communities who have long borne the brunt of racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and enforcement. Read more of this stirring introduction, and the other pieces in the collection, here.
Experts warn that PFAS appear to be widespread in our food supply. PFAS have contaminated dairy farms in Maine and Michigan, and testing from the consumer wellness site Mamavation found evidence of the compounds in organic pasta sauces, canola oils and nut butters. Michigan State University’s Carignan said that her initial thoughts on the Mamavation pasta sauce testing were that the results could be false positives, as there’s a number of challenges with testing for PFAS in food. But she added that researchers know that produce with higher water content, like tomatoes, can absorb more of the compounds, so “it’s possible that the results are real.” Read the full article here.
More than 1 in 4 adults ages 18 to 24 experience insomnia every night; it's the highest rate of insomnia out of any age group in the U.S. "We see that (insomnia) is higher than other populations," Jansen told USA TODAY. "In general, the young adult period is a time of a lot of transition in life, and a lot of uncertainty. We know that mental health issues are highly related to insomnia, and periods of uncertainty are also highly-related to insomnia." She said it's best for people to establish good bedtime routines and make sure bedtimes and wake times are the same every day. Read the full article here.
A natural small molecule derived from a cypress tree can transport iron in live mice and human cells lacking the protein that normally does the job, easing a buildup of iron in the liver and restoring hemoglobin and red blood cell production. Young-Ah Seo’s research group, which studies genetic disorders of iron and manganese, provided proof-of-concept that hinokitiol could improve anemia in mice. “These findings suggest that hinokitiol could deliver iron from the liver to red blood cells and thus improve hemoglobin in mice.” Read the research summary from the University of Illinois Newsroom here.
