Office of Research and Development Publications

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For many coastal areas around the Puget Sound, the interplay between weather, surface water, soils, evapotranspiration and groundwater flows is critical to modeling stream flow and predicting quantity and timing of flows under climate change. In this presentation, we introduce an...

Human activity has significantly increased the deposition of nitrogen (N) on terrestrial ecosystems over pre-industrial levels leading to a multitude of effects including losses of biodiversity, changes in ecosystem functioning, and impacts on human well-being. It is challenging ...

Background: Co-exposure to air pollution and neighborhood disadvantage may influence cognitive decline. We tested these associations in the context of dementia risk. Methods: We leveraged a cohort of community dwelling adults ≥65 years (n=5,112) enrolled from 2011 to 2018 in ...

Combustion of mixed materials during open air burning of refuse or structural fires in the wildland urban interface produces emissions that worsen air quality, contaminate rivers and streams, and cause poor health outcomes including developmental effects. The zebrafish, a freshwa...

In 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the EPA Environmental and Human Health Indicators Community of Practice (EHHI CoP) with members from across the agency. The purpose of the community has been to advance environmental and human health indicator[1]...

We reviewed the available social-ecological, hydrological, and geochemical literature for the ecological systems of the San Juan Bay Estuary (SJBE), a site in the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuarine Program. The objective of the review is to gather in one place a...

Evaluating biomarkers of stress in amphibians is critical to conservation, yet current techniques are often destructive and/or time-consuming, which limits ease of use. In the present study, we validate the use of dermal swabs in spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) for bioc...

Ricin is a highly toxic protein, capable of inhibiting protein synthesis within cells, and is produced from the beans of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant. Numerous recent incidents involving ricin have occurred, many in the form of mailed letters resulting in both buildin...

Historically, communities have used gray infrastructure—systems of gutters, pipes, and tunnels—to move stormwater away from where we live to treatment plants or straight to local water bodies.  The gray infrastructure in many areas is aging, popula...

The ASTM International standard test method for freshwater mussels (E2455-13) recommends 4-week toxicity testing with juveniles to evaluate chronic effects on survival and growth. However, concerns remain that the method may not adequately address the sensitivity of mussels to lo...

Animal toxicity testing is time and resource intensive, making it difficult to keep pace with the number of substances requiring assessment. Machine learning (ML) models that use chemical structure information and high-throughput experimental data can be helpful in predicting pot...

Legionella pneumophila is a persistent opportunistic pathogen that poses a significant threat to domestic water systems. Previous studies suggest that copper (Cu) is an effective antimicrobial in water systems. A rapid and sensitive quantification method is desired to optimize th...

The effort with FY19 funding was for further experimentation and refinement of a numerical model with benzene, in support of contamination resulting for California wildfires. This year's request (and corresponding change in FY) is aimed at unstudied organics. This work is also pa...

Propranolol is a heavily prescribed, nonspecific beta-adrenoceptor (bAR) antagonist frequently found in wastewater effluents, prompting concern over its potential to adversely affect exposed organisms. In the present study, the transcriptional responses of 4, 5, and 6 days postfe...

A random walk particle tracking approach was developed to analyze the advection and dispersion processes of the solute transport in a circular pipe. Stochastic difference equations were derived to model a solute particle’s two-dimensional random movement in the cross-section of a...

The Sample Collection Plan (SCP) Template Tool for Addressing Radiochemical Analytes in Environmental Matrices is intended to provide a “ready-to-go” outline for creating a SCP in EPA-report format. The Tool provides a general description of the types of information and sections ...

Distribution system nitrification is an important issue for water utilities that use chloramines as a secondary disinfectant. This presentation reviews the causes of nitrification and how to monitor, prevent, and react to nitrification events. Furthermore, an update on research n...

Agricultural soils are increasingly undergoing inadvertent and purposeful exposures to engineered CeO2 nanoparticles (NPs), which can impact crops and root-associated microbial communities. However, interactions between NP concentration and exposure duration on plant-mediate...

This is a poster for the 2023 National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO) Conference. This poster aims to demonstrate how EPA develops and delivers resources that meet the science needs of states/territories and other entities through highlighting ORD tools ...

Microplastics (MP) are found in marine sediments across the globe, but we are just beginning to understand their spatial distribution and assemblages. In this study, we quantified MP in Gulf of Maine, USA sediments. MP were extracted from 20 sediment samples, followed by polymer ...

Extensive research in recent years has reported higher per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) concentrations in municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill leachate than other municipal wastewaters, including multiple studies of leachate from MSW landfills in the United States. Becau...

Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of inhalation anthrax, is one of the most highly studied biological threat agents. Significant gaps remain related to the remediation of a wide area following such biological release. This extends to the remediation of critical assets owned...

This repository contains data for the manuscript “Three centuries of biogeochemical change in a temperate embayment as revealed by sediment cores stable isotopes and historical ecology”, by Sawyer J. Balint, Morgan Schwartz, Andrew Gray, Tim Cranston, Robinson W. Fulw...

Overview of the EPA ORD's extramural research grant programs such as STAR, P3, and National Priority will be presented to the academic researchers from Ohio State University.

Omics methodologies are increasingly used to inform human health risk assessment. The volume of transcriptomic data in particular has grown markedly with the commercialization of targeted sequencing approaches that enable high-throughput gene expression profiling. These technolog...