On September 18th, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law a landmark environmental justice bill. This bill, NJ S232, is designed to limit new sources of pollution in environmental justice communities by allowing the Department of Environmental Protection to deny permits for power plants, incinerators, landfills, large recycling facilities and sewage treatment plants if the new permits introduce additional health and environmental risks to already overburdened communities. This is the first state bill to address environmental injustice and cumulative exposures in this way in the country.

Environmental injustice refers to the disproportionate placement of sources such as pollution producing industry and landfills leading to greater exposure of low income and minority communities to environmental hazards due to unequal protection through laws, regulations, and enforcement. This injustice has been documented since the 1980s, starting with the work of the United Church of Christ in exposing how hazardous waste sites were disproportionately located in low income, minority communities. Recent studies have shown that these unequal impacts have continued, not only in regard to hazardous waste sites, but also in exposure to air pollution, water pollution, and more.

Recently, there has been an increasing focus on issues surrounding environmental injustice due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been shown to disproportionately affect people of color and individuals living in highly polluted areas. Environmental injustice is one facet of the racial injustice that has sparked national social justice protests across the country in recent months. Recognition that current federal environmental regulation is inadequate to protect all people has highlighted the need to legally address environmental justice on a state-level.

Pennsylvania is home to many environmental justice communities. The maps to the right show the locations of environmental justice communities in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia County which is almost entirely made up of environmental justice communities.

Chester, a small city just south of Philadelphia, has been a focus of environmental justice activism since the 1990s and has been identified as one of the nation’s worst cases of environmental racism. The population in Chester is 74% Black, with 33% of the population living below the poverty line. Chester is home to an unprecedented number of industrial polluting facilities, including a trash incinerator, a sewage treatment plant, oil refineries, and more. There are 11 industries that emit carcinogens in Chester; some emitting tens of thousands of pounds of carcinogens every year.

A bill like the one passed in New Jersey, could prevent current industries in Chester from expanding and prevent additional industries from coming to Chester. The Chester Environmental Partnership (CEP), a faith-based organization run by Dr. Horace Strand, has been working with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the EPA for years to limit the amount of air pollution in Chester, but the organization’s efforts are often limited by current state permitting policies that do not take cumulative health impacts into consideration. If the DEP was required to assess additional health and environmental risks to overburdened communities when considering new industrial permits, then communities like Chester would be protected from new industrial development that would add to the pollution burden and the human health risk.

If New Jersey can protect its citizens from environmental injustice, then why can’t Pennsylvania?

My name is Aditi Nayak, and I am from West Windsor, New Jersey. I am currently a rising sophomore at Amherst College, majoring in Neuroscience and Mathematics. Through the STEER program, I worked with Dr. Veasey to determine if developmental lead exposure caused lasting changes to sleep-related neurons and microglia in the lateral hypothalamus.

What is your summer research project?

Recent studies associate early childhood lead (Pb) exposure with sleep issues as early as preadolescence. The Veasey lab is trying to explain this correlation by identifying the mechanisms through which developmental lead exposure impacts the nervous system in utero. To determine this mechanism, we must figure out which portions of the brain are (and are not) impacted by lead exposure. This summer, I analyzed images of the lateral hypothalamus in mice models to see if its orexinergic neurons (neurons related to the sleep/wake cycle) and microglia are injured by lead exposure. My analysis demonstrates that there are enduring changes in the projections of orexinergic neurons and microglia, which corresponds to lasting sleep issues.

What are the implications of your research?

Despite regulatory efforts, lead remains prevalent in our environment. As a neurotoxin, lead exposure can impact brain development in children, potentially leading to permanent neurological damage that manifest into lasting lifestyle changes. If we can understand the mechanisms by which lead exposure in utero injures sleep-related neurons, then we can prevent early childhood lead exposure from inducing lasting sleep problems. Through my research, we know more about which neurons and regions of the brain are (and are not) injured by lead exposure. This information serves as clues to what the exact mechanism is.

What new skills have you gained through your research?

Although this year’s STEER program was entirely remote, I had the opportunity to gain new research skills for which I am extremely grateful. For example, I learned how to use ImageJ to analyze images of the brain. The remote nature of this internship also opened my eyes to the possibilities of remote research. Learning about my fellow STEER participant’s research, I now know more public data sources and how you can use RStudio and GIS to draw conclusions from publicly available information.

What is your summer research project?

My summer research project involves creating an experimental model of a multiple-host parasite system in order to study disease phenology or seasonality. A common example of this type of system is the bird-fish system in which a tapeworm parasite infects a three-spined stickleback fish which is then consumed by the belted kingfisher bird. This bird then becomes infected with the parasite and defecates into the water where the fish resides, leaving a growing parasite to once again infect more fish. This system, and many others like it, are strongly dependent on phenology or seasonality. Thus, phenology has the potential to increase or decrease transmission of the parasite depending on the life cycle of the fish and the bird. Changing seasons, which effect migration patterns and temperature for example, can impact how a parasite is transmitted as well as its virulence, effecting the entire host or multiple-host parasite system. This summer I have worked on experimentally modeling this system using bacteria and bacteriophage, the virus that infects the bacteria, in order to eventually test various aspects of seasonality on multiple-host parasite systems. 

What are the implications of your research?

This research has applications to the study of disease and understanding how climate change can impact disease phenology. By modeling these disease systems and determining how phenology impacts them over hundreds of seasons, which will be possible via this model, this concept can be applied to parasites that affect humans. For example, by understanding the impact of seasonality on mosquitoes, one can better understand how climate impacts the timing of transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans. This can be impactful in more effectively treating human disease by predicting when and where exactly disease is most virulent and has the highest rate of transmission. 

What new skills have you gained through your research?

This summer I have learned about bacterial culture, plasmids, and genetic recombineering. Part of this project includes the insertion of antibiotic resistance genes into the bacterial genome in order to knock out the J gene, a gene that encodes for receptor that recognizes a certain type of bacteriophage, requiring a specific set of protocols. I have also been using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) in order to verify that some of these genes have been inserted or deleted from the bacterial genome. 

My name is Kimmy Halberstadter, and I am a rising senior at Penn.  I am majoring in Cognitive Science with a specific concentration in neuroscience, sparked by my deeper interest in exploring the overlap and interactions between biological mechanisms and psychological behavior.  In the spring of my junior year at Penn, I began working in Dr. Mariella De Biasi’s pharmacology and neuroscience lab, exploring various effects of substance use on neural development and behavior in a mouse model.  Through the STEER program, I have been able to continue this work over the summer and expand both my knowledge of this field and my general skills working in a wet lab. 

What is your summer research project? 

This summer, my primary project sought to explore the effects of maternal opioid usage on offspring who were exposed to these opioids in utero.  With great mentorship from Vanessa Fleites and Dr. De Biasi, I have been able to record and analyze multiple types of data, all lending to the common theme of prenatal exposure to opioids.  This research follows these opioid-exposed pups through multiple stages of their development, from their first days, through adolescence, all the way to adulthood. 

What are the implications of your research? 

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 130 United States residents die every day after overdosing from opioids.  Even more, Pennsylvania has the third highest rate of fatal drug overdose, and Philadelphia alone saw over 1,100 fatal drug overdoses in 2018.  It is no secret that opioid use in the United States has been on the rise in recent years, and the often-fatal implications of this usage are astounding.  In order to properly curb this rising drug usage, it is imperative to understand the roots of drug-initiating behavior and the mechanisms in the brain which either affect or are affected by this usage. 

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) resulting from prenatal exposure to certain drugs poses a particular problem to newborn children.  This syndrome describes a host of dangerous symptoms suffered by a newborn, and research today is interested in looking at long-term consequences of this exposure.  The idea of prenatal exposure to opioids (through maternal usage) is thus of interest in the De Biasi lab, in hopes of better understanding the effects (both short-term and long-term) of opioid use and exposure on later development and behavior so as to inform future efforts to curb this drug usage. 

What new skills have you gained through your research? 

My work as part of the STEER program has helped me improve my laboratory and leadership skills while also exploring more deeply the environmental implications of my work.  Although I have always taken an interest in environmental health, and have more recently explored in-depth environmental toxicology, this environmental perspective had not to date been the primary focus of my work; by combining pharmacological research with lectures and research on public health (and the effects of the environment on this public health), I have been able to widen the scope of my exploration and understanding.  It has been particularly special to examine the effects of opioid use not only on the patient-level, but also on the population (and environment) level.  The STEER program has enriched my research experience, and my work in the lab specifically has given me the chance to utilize my interests in environmental and public health and provide an additional perspective in the lab. 

My name is Sunny Zhang and I am a rising sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania studying physics. Although I have never done research in environmental science prior to coming to Penn, I was involved in energy research for many years in high school and was also an active member of environmental groups. This summer, I had the opportunity to pursue my interest in materials science research while also learning about various applications to biosensing and environmental health. Participating in the STEER program has introduced me to many new fields which I can now add to my list of possible future research directions. 

What is your summer research project? 

This summer, I have been working in the lab of Dr. Charlie Johnson. My research project involves biosensors in the form of highly sensitive carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (NTFETs) as a way to detect environmental toxins. Specifically, I decided to focus on the detection of benzene, which is a known pollutant in air and groundwater. To do this, I used an olfaction system based on large arrays of NTFET sensors to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the headspace of samples prepared with varying concentrations of benzene. The arrays were functionalized with single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), each with a particular sequence that interacts with the VOCs (in this case the benzene vapor). By measuring the current responses of each device when exposed to the benzene vapor, I was able to distinguish the various concentrations of benzene in the original samples. 

What are the implications of your research? 

According to the World Health Organization, human exposure to benzene has been associated with various adverse health effects, including cancer and anemia. Toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene are also similarly harmful, and all of these chemicals are widely used in the petroleum industry. Because the electronic olfaction system is modeled after mammalian olfaction systems, it contains many sensors that each respond differently to aromatic molecules, meaning that the system can be used to detect a wide variety of VOCs. In addition to benzene, it has been able to detect low concentrations of dinitrotoluene (DNT) and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP), among other chemicals. In the future, we can test for certain metabolites resulting from exposure to organic pollutants, since the system is also capable of detecting and identifying volatile biomarkers for various diseases. 

What new skills have you gained through this experience? 

Over the course of the summer, I have gained many new skills both in and out of the lab. In my research, I was introduced to nanofabrication techniques such as ALD and PVD. I also learned how to handle organic chemicals and biological material. In addition, the weekly lectures and field trips helped me learn about research techniques in many different fields, ranging from laboratory experiments to case studies to community-based approaches. I learned that in some cases, environmental science research is not limited to a lab. For instance, in the town of Palmerton, the scientists at the Lehigh Gap Nature Center had the entire town and mountainside to work with, and the process of treating the environmental damage was an endeavor that took years, rather than a project that could be completed over the course of a summer. Overall, my experience with the STEER program has been both challenging and rewarding, and I am very grateful to have had this opportunity this summer. 

My name is Katie Bisson, and I am a rising senior at the University of Rochester interested in data-driven approaches to exploring environmental issues.

What is your summer research project?

This summer I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Field to investigate the health impacts of fracking throughout the state of Pennsylvania using publicly available data. Guided by private results that have found a link between increases in cardiology hospital utilization and fracking, I have used free, public datasets on cardiac catheterizations and heart disease mortalities to see whether a relationship can be established.

What are the implications of your research?

The EPA under Scott Pruitt pushed to implement a “no secret science” rule that would eliminate reliance on non-public scientific data for creating EPA rules. This would take any health studies involving confidential patient information off the table for informing EPA policy. Most recently under Andrew Wheeler, the rule has been pushed back to the EPA’s long-term agenda. Even so, investigating the ability for publicly available data to confirm existing nonpublic research is a critical step in preparing for the potential implications for the environmental health community and the country as a whole.

What new skill have you gained through your research?

Through my research I have been able to further develop my skills using GIS and statistical software. Through lectures and field trips, the STEER program gave me exposure to many aspects of environmental health and science that will inform my future in the environmental community.