Affiliations

• Environmental Health Sciences Research Center
• Interdisciplinary Program in Human Toxicology
• Iowa Superfund Research Program
• IIHR Hydroscience & Engineering

Research Concentration

My laboratory is interested in the effect of environmental pollutants, such as neurotoxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and their transformation products on the developing brain. We use exposomics approaches to identify the metabolites formed in various model systems, including animal models, and to determine which metabolites are distributed to target organs, such as the developing brain. More recently we have begun to investigate whether or not local metabolism of environmental pollutants in the brain affects neurotoxic outcomes. Other ongoing, multidisciplinary research projects investigate the effect of dysbiosis of the gut microbiome, caused by exposure to environmental pollutants, on neurotoxic outcomes in the brain and characterize the exposome (i.e., all exogenous chemicals) in the human brain across the lifespan. The objective of these research projects is to inform future risk assessment by defining the link between neurotoxic environmental pollutants present in the brain and neurotoxic outcomes following exposure to these chemicals.