The Risk Science Center has announced a $5 million gift that will position the University to become the nation’s premier comprehensive resource for assessing, quantifying and communicating risks to public health.
“There is a serious and growing need to answer questions about environmental risk and its impact on human health,” says Kenneth Warner, dean of the School of Public Health (SPH).
The Risk Science Center, established in 2003, is one of about a dozen such centers in the country. Housed in SPH, the center draws on expertise from across campus and outside the University, bringing multidisciplinary skills to the study of the diverse health hazards that people face. Professors Martin Philbert and David Garabrant are the center’s founding co-directors.
“This center will generate scientific research that will inform decision-making and the shaping of health policy,” Philbert says.
While other centers specialize in either risk assessment (evaluating risks), risk exposure (quantifying the amount of an exposure) or risk communications (explaining risks), U-M’s risk center is the only one that focuses on all three.
Center researchers are currently working on such issues as the role of pesticides in pancreatic cancer, lung cancer in automobile assembly plants, the effect of dioxin exposure, the public health impact of global climate change, how perception of risk affects treatment decisions of breast cancer patients, industrial ventilation, dust control in workplaces, human exposure to aerosols and the safety of consumption of fish.
The $5 million gift, which is part of the school’s fundraising for the Michigan Difference Campaign, provides immediate funding to expand the research agenda. It also supports graduate student fellowships and general operations, including the hiring of two additional faculty members, and establishes a named professorship for a senior researcher.
The gift is from Charles and Rita Gelman of Ann Arbor. Their donation is influenced by personal experience. In the 1980s Charles Gelman’s company, Gelman Sciences, disagreed with a cleanup protocol ordered by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after contaminant 1,4-dioxane was discovered in groundwater near the company’s site, but eventually the parties agreed to a groundwater cleanup. Gelman, no longer involved with the company, believes a settlement would have come earlier if a neutral entity such as the Risk Science Center had existed.
“Chemical and other risks to human health are important and complicated issues,” says Gelman, a 1958 SPH graduate. “Our vision is to help inform industry, government and the public about how to properly assess the benefits and hazards posed by technology (and chemicals in particular) in our society.”
For more information go to www.umriskcenter.org.
