U of A receives $14.8 million grant for Superfund program

The University of Arizona Superfund Research Center has received a $14.8 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health. The grant will be used to fund research projects to understand and mitigate health threats from contaminated dust from mines and hazardous fungal spores inside mining communities.

The Superfund Research Center, also known as “The DUST Center: Hazardous Dust in Drylands- Exposure, Health Impacts, and Mitigation,” was established in 1989 and has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1997. Its work focuses on mining towns and Native Nations across the Arizona-Sonora border region, where residents face chronic inhalation of arsenic-rich dust from mine tailings – waste left over from mining operations. This new round of funding will support four new integrated research projects.

Professor Xinxin Ding, U of A Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Professor Raina Maier, U of A College of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences, joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk more about what this grant means for the Superfund Research Center.