269 



Participants: More than 200 people, 35 organizations, and many disciplines were 

 involved in this Project. This reflected the Project's view that solving difficult envi- 

 ronmental problems must draw on many of "society's "partners." 



Cost: Total cost for this Project was approximately $2.3 million. Amoco Oil Com- 

 pany provided 70 percent of the funding and EPA the remainder. 



Prepared Statement of Kenneth Olden, Ph.D., National Institute of 

 Environmental Health Sciences 



I am pleased to submit testimony for the record on the mission and activities of 

 the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. 



The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a biomedical 

 research institute within the National Institutes of Health, makes a critical and 

 unique contribution to a broad Federal effort to protect human health from the 

 spectrum of diseases and disabilities associated with chemical, biological, and physi- 

 cal agents in the environment. 



The NIEHS research program consists of human studies (clinical research, clinical 

 trials, and epidemiologic studies), fundamental biological research, and toxicologic 

 research conducted in intramural and private laboratories, in rural and urban com- 

 munities, and in research hospitals. The work is carried out by 600 university-based 

 investigators throughout the United States and by 400 staff scientists in the NIEHS 

 headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. 



Human health is determined by complex interactions between individual genetic 

 susceptibility and the environment. Both these components change over the course 

 of one's lifetime. One important component of the basic biomedical research con- 

 ducted and supported by NIEHS is entirely unique in the Federal Government. 

 NIEHS maintains the only concerted research effort that addresses human suscepti- 

 bility to various environmental exposures at the molecular, cellular, and intercellu- 

 lar levels. NIEHS scientists are applying the explosion in knowledge of human biol- 

 ogy and the latest scientific technologies and tools of molecular biology to the identi- 

 fication of specific receptors and genetic loci that are adversely affected by environ- 

 mental factors and lead to a host of chronic diseases and disabilities. This research 

 should lead to critically needed diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to environ- 

 mental illness and to the development of molecular and other preventive interven- 

 tions. 



Unlike the research conducted or supported by other Federal public health or en- 

 vironmental protection agencies that must be done in direct support of their mis- 

 sions, the placement of NIEHS in the National Institutes of Health has allowed 

 highest priority to be given to research proposals that score highest in peer-review 

 evaluations of the proposals' excellence and innovation whether the studies are ai>- 

 plied or basic in nature. In addition, NIEHS is able to provide and sustain support 

 for very high-risk research proposals that may not have a recognizable potential to 

 yield immediate new data. 



NIEHS also has an important collaborative role within the Public Health Service 

 and with the many other Federal agencies with environmental research activities. 

 The totality of the research conducted or supported by NIEHS research remains rel- 

 evant and vitally important to the resolution of the complex public health and envi- 

 ronmental p)olicy and protection issues that face Federal, state, and local policy 

 makers and program officieds. Historically, NIEHS research has provided the health 

 sciences data base for such high visibility programs as the prevention of lead poison- 

 ing in children; establishment of levels of concern for priority air pollutants; and 

 the prevention of certain environmentally related reproductive disabilities and 

 human cancers. 



Today, the NIEHS has almost unlimited potential to combine the many scientific 

 disciplines involved in modem environmental health sciences to address such issues 

 as: 



• Combining molecular biology and epidemiology to conduct molecular epidemio- 

 logic studies aimed at improving the accuracy and predictive capacity of communi- 

 ty-based environmental epidemiology to establish causal relationships between spe- 

 cific environmental exposures and human diseases. 



• Identifying, reducing, and preventing the contribution of environmental factors 

 to hormonally related cancers such as those of the breast, uterus, and prostate. 



• Characterizing the relationship between bone metabolism, exposure and uptake 

 of lead and other metals, exposure to DES, and the development of osteoporosis. 



• Developing scientifically sound strategies to predict toxic effects of classes of 

 manmade chemical and physical agents before they are introduced into the environ- 



