Re-established UCSD center to study ocean’s impact on human’s health
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The University of California, San Diego just received more than $7 million to bring back a center that studies how contaminants found in the ocean can affect people’s health.
The National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health gave the university about $7.35 million in funding, which will be distributed over the course of five years, UCSD said last week.
The goal is to re-establish the Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health, which was originally operational from 2013 to 2018, to study contaminants found in seafood and man-made chemicals in human breast milk.
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The center’s re-establishment is part of a joint effort by the NIH and NSF to renew two centers and fund four new Centers for Oceans and Human Health as part of a larger research program that studies marine-related health issues.
Experts from UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences will be part of a multidisciplinary research team at the center, as well as NOAA’s California Sea Grant and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
According to the university, the center will have three primary research goals. They will study how climate change impacts the human intake of seafood micronutrients and contaminants, as well as analyze how organic pollutants like polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are made and how they affect the marine ecosystem. The third research area will focus on a molecular level and learning how marine pollutants accumulate in the human body.
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UCSD says the Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health will also have community engagement activities to help raise awareness about the benefits of consuming fish while simultaneously trying to understand the barriers to accessing safe and sustainable seafood.
The other funded centers are located at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and NSF are expected to award two other centers in the near future.
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