Texas Environmental News

Innovative Technologies For Hazardous Waste Site Redemdiation And Monitoring

The mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is to promote research that will ultimately reduce the burden of human illness and dysfunction from environmental causes.  Complementary to this mission are the goals of the national Superfund Program, established by Congress in 1980 to: identify, uncontrolled hazardous wastes; characterize the impacts of hazardous waste sites and emergency releases on the surrounding environment (i.e. communities, ecological systems, and ambient air, soil, water); and, institute control or remediation approaches to minimize risk from exposure to these contaminants.  With the 1980 passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), better known as Superfund, it soon became clear that the strategies for the cleanup of Superfund sites and the technologies available to implement these cleanups, were inadequate to address the magnitude and complexity of the problem.  

In 1986, six years after the CERCLA was enacted, Congress authorized NIEHS to implement a university-based program of basic research and training grants.  The intent was to improve the ability to identify, assess, and evaluate the potential health effects of exposure to hazardous waste and to develop innovative chemical, physical and biological technologies for remediating sites contaminated by hazardous substances.  The assignment of this Program, the Hazardous Substances Research and Training program [Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP)], to the NIEHS underscored an emphasis on human health effects assessment, evaluation and prevention.  However, NIEHS was provided latitude to support non-traditional NIH research areas such as fate and transport and remediation strategies for environmental contaminants.  NIEHS has implemented this program by supporting coordinated multiproject, multidisciplinary university-based programs that link biomedical research with related engineering, hydrogeologic and ecologic research.  A component of this multidisciplinary approach has been the development of innovative remediation technologies that limit and/or prevent exposure.

This initiative is designed to foster the commercialization of technologies, products and devices developed by the SBRP and others.  An intent of this solicitation is to develop products emanating from the science supported by the SBRP that is relevant to the clean-up and monitoring of hazardous substances.  The Small Business Innovative Research /Small Business Technology Transfer Research (SBIR/STTR) program is ideally suited to support these demonstration commercialization opportunities.  This RFA provides a flexible system within the SBIR/STTR program that allows for the development of products and devices for remediation and monitoring of hazardous waste sites.

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	Did You Know?
	A pollutant is a contaminant at a concentration high enough to public health or aquatic life Pollutant or contaminant as defined by section 101(33) of CERCLA, shall include, but not be limited to, any element, substance, compound, or mixture, including disease-causing agents, which after release into the environment and upon exposure, ingestion, inhalation, or assimilation into any organism, either directly from the environment or indirectly by ingestion through food chains, will or may reasonably be anticipated to cause death, disease, behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutation, physiological malfunctions (including malfunctions in reproduction) or physical deformations, in such organisms or their offspring.