Invitation to Participate in NCSU Study
On Human Health and Environmental Racial Justice
Two ICCT network churches already participating
You and others in your faith community have an opportunity to make a contribution to public health and environmental racial justice by participating in a study by Cathrine Hoyo, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at North Carolina State University. She is studying the effect of environmental contaminants such as PFAS and toxic metals on liver health. Data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that the body burden of environmental contaminants is disproportionately borne by ethnic minorities and the poor of any ethnicity. Unfortunately, the data we have right now are limited and cannot be used for environmental policy. This study was funded with a federal grant and can possibly enable better policy. Participating in the study is one way people of faith can contribute to environmental racial justice.
Two ICCT network churches already participating. To sign up as an individual or to discuss how to get your congregation involved, please call Dr. Hoyo directly at the number listed below. If you’d like to speak with someone from one of the congregations already committed and gearing up to participate, please email ICCT at ICCTriangle@gmail.com.
Our problem with environmental contaminants. The increase in the body burden of environmental contaminants such as the recent per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and toxic metals such as cadmium, has troubled many of us for some time. (Are ‘forever chemicals’ harmful? My family’s frightening NC story, an opinion piece in the News and Observer on November 21, 2021, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article255212846.html). This worry has been exacerbated by data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showing that the body burden of environmental contaminants is disproportionately born by ethnic minorities and the poor of any ethnicity.
Our liver health. The accumulation of these contaminants is suspected to be linked to the increase in liver diseases that we see, especially in the Southern States. These liver diseases include non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)/non-alcoholic hepato-steatosis (NASH), fibrosis, and cirrhosis for which a subset progresses to liver cancer. But the data we have right now are limited and cannot be used for environmental policy. Two NIH institutes have funded a $17 million grant to NC State, Duke, UNC and Emory, to recruit and study 16,000 otherwise healthy people in North Carolina and Georgia.
Invitation from Dr. Hoyo. We are asking for your participation if you are aged 40-75 years. We are going all over North Carolina to congregations and general medicine clinics in 39 counties because we want to ensure representation of both higher and lower socioeconomic status and all ethnic groups.
Participation involves providing urine, blood and answering questions (all lasting no more than an hour). Privacy and robust Covid control protocols are assured. We will measure your body burden of these contaminants, every 1-2 years over the length of the study (funded for 6 years with possible 6-year extension) and provide you the results as soon as we measure them.
If you are interested in discussing the possibility of you and/or others from your faith community participating, please call 919-515-0540.
—
Cathrine Hoyo, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor, Department of Biological Sciences
Co-Director, Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core,
Center for Human Health and the Environment
Director, Epidemiology and Environmental Epigenomics Laboratory
North Carolina State University,
Campus Box 7633,
Raleigh, NC 27695-7633
Telephone: 919-515-0540
Email address: choyo@ncsu.edu
