28 August 2010: We will run a half day workshop on Disease Mapping using Generalized Additive Models at ISES/ISEE 2010.
13 August 2010: Alicia Fraser defends her dissertation "Assessing Exposure to Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers and Polyfluroinated Compounds from Diet and the Indoor Environment"
19 July 2010: Two new papers by Robin Young et al. examine the statistical properties of using GAMs for mapping of disease. GAMs compare favorably with the widely used spatial scan statistic SaTScan in many cases. For more information on spatial statistics, look here.
Young RL et al. A power comparison of generalized additive models and the spatial scan statistic in a case-control setting. International Journal of Health Geographics 2010, 9:37. [Online 19 July 2010]. The full text is freely available doi:10.1186/1476-072X-9-37
Young RL et al. Generalized Additive Models and Inflated Type I Error Rates of Smoother Significance Tests. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis. In press. doi:10.1016/j.csda.2010.05.004.
30 June 2010: New Jersey Public Television (see 'Teflon Additive story') reports on Kate Hoffman's new study finding an association between ADHD and PFOA. Look here for a print story.
15 June 2010: Jessica Nelson defends her dissertation ''Analyzing Biomonitoring Surveillance Data on Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals for Population Exposure Patterns and Health Outcomes
3 May 2010: Kate Hoffman defends her dissertation "Polyfluoroalkyl Chemicals and Learning and Developmental Disabilities: Epidemiology and Exposure Assessment"
26 March 2010: Robin Young defends her dissertation "Properties of Hypothesis Tests Using Generalized Additive Models with Smoothers of Geographic Location in Spatial Statistics"
25 March 2010: New paper on the spatial distribution of rheumatoid arthrititis in the US.
2 November 2009: New article in EHP on the association between perfluoroalkyl chemicals and cholesterol in the general US population. Doctoral student Jessica Nelson is the lead author. It received extensive press coverage, e.g., the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Charleston Gazette, Living on Earth.
October 2009. News article by Naomi Lubick "PBDEs in Diet: Meat Fat a Leading Source" on our recent PBDE and diet paper.
18 August 2009: News article by Kellyn Betts, "Discontinued pajama flame retardant detected in baby products and house dust," discusses our new paper on TDCPP ("chlorinated tris").
17 July 2009: News article in Wired about our new paper on diet as a source of exposure to PBDEs.
18 March 2009: News article by Kellyn Betts, "CSI-style tools offer clues about flame retardants in dust," in ES&T discusses our new paper on the use of scanning electron microscopes and other "CSI" tools to investigate PBDEs in dust.
18 February 2009: New paper on the impact of biomonitoring on participants. It is often said that biomonitoring studies can discourage breast feeding, but little research has been done on how participants in such studies actually feel. To find out what we discovered, read our new paper.
3 December 2008: News article by Kellyn Betts in ES&T discusses decabromodiphenyl ethane (DBDPE), another new flame retardant we found in house dust in collaboration with Heather Stapleton.
13 October 2008: Our recent time-space analysis of breast cancer was covered in the Cape Cod Times.
22 September 2008: Our multilevel analysis of breast cancer was featured in a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) press release on spatial epidemiology.
13 August 2008: New spatial epidemiology publication in the International Journal of Health Geographics on time-space clustering of breast cancer on Cape Cod, including a cool animation, Vieira et al 2008.
23 July 2008: See our paper on alternative brominated flame retardants in dust, including components of Firemaster 550, the replacement for the penta form of PBDE in Environmental Science and Technology. See also the accompanying story by Kellyn Betts.
A brominated form of the phthalate DEHP that is used as a component of Firemaster 550. For more information, look here.
July 2008: Our PBDE work was featured in the Summer 2008 edition of Bostonia magazine. See Art Jahnke's "Trouble at Home. BU researchers track the path of a chemical threat from our living rooms to our hormones"
20 May 2008: Doctoral student Greg Howard defends his dissertation on chemical mixtures.
1 May 2008: Work by our PBDE group heavily featured in a news story in today's Environmental Health Perspectives.
1 May 2008: Doctoral student Lisa Gallagher defends her dissertation on the use of GIS in exposure assessment.
25 April 2008: New spatial epidemiology publication on multilevel modeling of breast cancer
18 April 2008: Our PBDE work featured on Nature Network Boston.
27 March 2008: We have three new papers on exposure to PBDEs in press: on PBDEs in handwipes, measuring PBDEs in dust, linking PBDEs in dust to household products via XRF.
6 March 2008: Paper by doctoral student Nerissa Wu on PBDEs is one of the most cited papers published in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T) in 2007. learn more
Doctoral student Joe Allen's dissertation defense
Joe defended his dissertation Assessing Exposure to PBDEs in the Home Environment: Linking Sources to Personal Exposure on 10 December 2007.
4 December 2007: Doctoral student Greg Howard presents at the Superfund Basic Research Program annual meeting.
Greg gave a plenary presentation in the section on "Modeling Mixtures of Full and Partial Agonists Using Generalized Concentration Addition. " SBRP 2007.
Workshop on ecologic inference: 28-30 November 2007, DIMACS, Rutgers University
The workshop is part of the DIMACS Special Focus on Computational and Mathematical Epidemiology. The workshop primarily discussed study designs combining individual and group level data.
- More information on the workshop
- More information on ecologic studies.
Harry Potter and chemical interactions
- "Golpatt's Third Law states that the antidote for a blended poison will be equal to more than the sum of the antidotes for each of the separate components."--Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, pg. 374 [thanks to Greg Howard for pointing this out]
5 July 2007: New paper on ecologic bias: Webster TF. Bias magnification in ecologic studies: a methodological investigation. Environmental Health 2007; 6:17. The full text is freely available here. To learn more about our work on spatial epidemiology, see Spatial Epidemiology.
Risk diagram illustrating confounding by group.
- Individual level: The solid black lines describing the individual-level information in the two groups are parallel--same risk differences b--but have different intercepts (different background risks q0<>q1). The crude estimate of the risk difference bc is confounded (blue line).
- Group level: The ecologic estimate of the risk difference be is the slope of the red line through the two ecologic data points. Massive confounding has occurred, but we can’t tell this from the ecologic data alone.
- Comparison of results on the two levels: The ecologic estimate of the risk difference be is much more biased than the crude individual-level estimate bc . Both biases are in the same direction.
21 June 2007: Doctoral student Greg Howard wins best poster award at 2007 Society for Epidemiologic Research Conference. See Howard G, Webster T. Contrasting Theories of Additivity, Synergy, and Antagonism in Epidemiology and Toxicology. American Journal of Epidemiology 2007; 165(11) Suppl: S62. To learn more about our work on interaction, see Interactions of chemicals.
13 June 2007: News story "Finding PBDEs in couches and TVs" by Kellyn Betts in Environmental Science &Technology. To learn more about our work on PBDEs, see (PBDEs).
"This handheld X-ray fluorescence analyzer allows Joseph Allen of Boston University to detect in seconds the presence of bromine in household products such as televisions."
photo by M. Kenda
11 June 2007: Doctoral student Jessica Nelson awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship for 2007/2008. This prestigious fellowship supports graduate students whose studies are directed toward improving environmental quality and who demonstrate leadership in their field. Nelson's research centers on biomonitoring, the practice of measuring chemicals in peoples' bodies and an important tool for environmental epidemiology. Her work is interdisciplinary, and uses quantitative and qualitative research methods to study its scientific applications as well as its social implications.
photo: Jessica Nelson and Madeleine K. Scammell, Coordinators of the 2006 Boston Consensus Conference on Biomonitoring
24 May 2007: What do PBDEs have to do with the the cartoon character Pigpen? Read about it in our recent article: Allen JG, McClean MD, Stapleton HM, Nelson JW, Webster TF. Personal exposure to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in residential indoor air. Environ Sci Technol 2007; 41(13): 4574-4579. Abstract and full text (for ES&T subscribers): doi=10.1021/es0703170. To learn more about our work on PBDEs, see (PBDEs).
Charles Schulz
27 April 2007: Doctoral student Joseph Allen wins a Jansson and Bergman Student Award for Outstanding Student Presentation at BFR 2007: The Fourth International Conference on Brominated Flame Retardants. To learn more about our work on PBDEs, see (PBDEs).
17 January 2007: News story "The risk of PBDEs in dust: New research confirms that people can take up brominated flame retardants from the dust in their homes" by Kellyn Betts in Environmental Science &Technology. The story concerns our paper linking the concentrations of PBDEs in people to the levels found in dust from their homes. See: Wu N, Herrmann T, Paepke O, Tickner J, Hale R, Harvey E, La Guardia M, McClean MD, Webster TF. Human exposure to PBDEs: Associations of PBDE body burdens with food consumption and house dust concentrations. Environ Sci Technol 2007; 41(5): 1584-1589. Web release date: 17 Jan 2007. Abstract and full text (for ES&T subscribers): doi=10.1021/es0620282. To learn more about our work on PBDEs, see (PBDEs).
11 December 2006: Boston Consensus Conference on Biomonitoring. Learn more
photo: Jessica Nelson and Madeleine K. Scammell, Coordinators of the 2006 Boston Consensus Conference on Biomonitoring
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