Assorted fish on ice.
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The University of California, San Diego has received more than $7 million to revive a center that studies how pollutants found in the ocean affect human health.
UCSD announced last week that the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health will provide the university with approximately $7.35 million in funding, which will be distributed over five years.
The goal is to re-establish the Scripps Center for Ocean and Human Health, which operated from 2013 to 2018, to study contaminants in seafood and man-made chemicals in breast milk.
The center's reestablishment is part of a larger research program to study ocean-related health issues, a collaboration between the NIH and NSF that will renew two centers and fund four new ocean and human health centers. It's part of the effort.
Experts from UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Skaggs School of Pharmacy, and School of Biological Sciences will join the center's interdisciplinary research team, as well as NOAA's California Sea Grant and the Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
The center has three main research goals, the university said. They will study how climate change will affect human intake of micronutrients and contaminants in seafood, as well as how organic contaminants such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are produced and We plan to analyze what impact it will have on the marine ecosystem. The third research area will focus on the molecular level and learn how marine pollutants accumulate in the human body.
According to UCSD, the Scripps Center for Marine and Human Health will engage communities to raise awareness about the benefits of consuming fish while also understanding barriers to obtaining safe and sustainable seafood. They also plan to carry out activities.
Other centers receiving funding are at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, the 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 plan to honor two additional centers in the near future.
