Nursing & Environmental Health Conference: Methymercury and Human Health Effects

University Of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Harvard School of Public Health's Environmental Health Center COEP and the UW-Milwaukee Marine & Freshwater Biomedical Sciences (MFBS) Center COEP have collaborated on a two-year initiative to help meet the Institute of Medicine's (1995) goals of increasing the competency of nurses in environmental health. The Harvard-UWM COEP partnership has targeted nurse faculty and public health nurses (PHNs) for a site visit approach to immerse participants in a focused environmental health problem during an intensive 2.5-day workshop. The investigators held the first of two workshops at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Woburn, Massachusetts's trichloroethylene-contaminated Superfund site in 2005. Before the site-visit, workshop participants used fate-and-transport models to understand how contaminants of the soil are transported to distant sites including ground- and surface waters. After the field-trip, their academic and public health nurse attendees planned two projects that would serve as 'products' of the workshop. They have 'monitored' the progress of the two projects through contact that includes a list-serve of workshop attendees and contact with workshop faculty. It is the investigators intent to bring a representative of each of the two projects to Milwaukee for the workshop in 2006 as exemplars of environmental health in public health nursing and the academy. The workshop in Milwaukee will examine the problem of methylmercury and human health effects, again using the site-visit approach. With a somewhat larger number of participants, the investigators will use two sites. Their plan is to use a coal-burning power plant for one site and a local waterway that is used for fishing by the Hmong for the other site. In keeping with the theme, their keynote speaker is Dr. Phlippe Grandjean, the principal investigator for the Faroe Islander studies on the health effects of methylmercury in infants and children. Other highlights of the workshop are presentations on the Precautionary Principle and updates on the projects initiated at the 2005 workshop; a culturally sensitive video on fishing and fish risk communication by Hmong; a poster presentation session that illustrates traditional medicines, herbs, candies, cosmetics, and other products that can be sources of exposure to mercury, lead, and other toxins; a science experiment using fat head minnows to examine the reproductive behaviors and outcomes of fish; and the formation of new PHN-academic partnerships to address environmental health educational and public health nursing projects. The investigators discuss plans for national advertising strategies, for evaluation of the workshop, and for ongoing support for the projects and their dissemination. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]