Toxicology and Societies Speaker Series - Elaine Faustman

Title: Developing New Windows to Understand How we can Protect Children from Environmental Impacts

An important challenge to Public Health researchers is to protect children from environmental impacts that may affect their wellbeing and development. International focus on how to prevent such exposures has occurred because of WHO initiatives that emphasize prevention of non-communicable disease. Three new integrating concepts support these approaches. First, increasing recognition of the importance of considering Life course concepts in understanding normal as well as altered development provides an expanded basis for our comparisons. Second, understanding new genomic integration has helped define key pathways that define both healthy development as well as how such processes can be altered. Third, concepts of an Exposome has better identified how we characterize environmental exposures and windows of sensitivity when we conduct and evaluate children’s cohort studies. Examples for each of these concepts will be discussed and a framework for integrating risk assessments across species and research findings will be presented using illustrations from a Washington state children’s study.

About the Speaker: Elaine Faustman, University of Washington

Dr. Elaine M. Faustman, Ph.D. DABT, ATS, is Professor and Director of the Institute of Risk Analysis and Risk Communication, School of Public Health at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Risk Analysis. She has served on the USEPA Science Advisory Board, NIEHS National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences Council, NTP Board of Scientific Counselors and has served as the Secretary General for IUTOX. Currently, she is a Co-chair of the steering committee of the International Science Council World Data Systems. Her research expertise is on identifying molecular mechanisms of developmental, reproductive, and neuro toxicants, characterizing in vitro techniques for toxicology assessment, and developing biological based dose-response models. She has directed a Center for Oceans and Human Health that has been funded by the NIEHS to look at models for evaluating engineered nanomaterials. She has over 200 peer reviewed research publications and reports. Recent research efforts include her leadership as PI for the EPA Predictive Toxicology Center and her work with the NICHD Health Measurement Network Environmental Domain Working Group and Lifecourse Health Sciences Working Group.

Watch the video recording of Elaine's presentation.

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