Microbe Power!

Strategic Plan New Frontiers in Environmental Sciences and Human Health (NIEHS 2006c) seeks to " challeng[e] and energiz[e] the scientific community to use environmental health sciences to understand the causes of disease and to improve human health " (National Institutes of Health 2006). The strategic plan emphasizes, among other things, integrative research, community-linked research, and prioritizing environmental factors that are most likely contributing to human disease. Consistent with the goals of the strategic plan, new technologies in information systems, data federation, grid systems, and spatial analytics all hold great promise of enabling integrated science teamwork while helping to disentangle genetic, environmental , and other factors that contribute to the complex etiology of common human diseases. Such systems will provide effective means of knowledge and data sharing among scientists, as well as rapid and efficient approaches for sorting through and analyzing large data sets; thus, these systems will support both the scientific and policy processes while accelerating the rate of knowledge production and discovery. The need for such systems to address environmental health concerns was made especially apparent when a series of devastating hurricanes ripped across the Gulf Coast of the United States during 2005 (Schwartz 2005). The effects of Hurricane Katrina were especially severe: The human and environmental health impacts on New Orleans, Louisiana, and other Gulf Coast communities will be felt for many decades to come Agency (FEMA) estimates that Katrina's destruction (exacerbated by the chronic loss of wetlands, land subsidence, and inadequate infrastructure) disrupted the lives of roughly 650,000 Americans (U.S. Department of Commerce 2006). Over 1,300 people died. The projected economic costs for recovery and reconstruction are unprecedented—likely to exceed $125 billion (Pastor et al. 2006). The density of industrial operations in New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta before the Katrina disaster combined with the release of contaminants into floodwaters and their transport throughout urbanized areas to give rise to many significant environmental health concerns. At the same time, the flooding of thousands of homes and > 100 schools may have created indoor environments that threaten human respiratory and neurologic health through the growth of mold and other bioaeroallergens. All of these potential exposures took place within the context of high psychosocial stress and, for many, low socioeconomic status—conditions that often exacerbate the effects of adverse environmental exposures (Berube and Katz 2005). Health disparities that result from poverty and inadequate infrastructure raise serious concerns about environmental justice …