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Joanna Burger, PhD |
| Title: Professor |
| Affiliation: Rutgers, The State University of NJ |
| Department:
Pharmacology and Toxicology |
| Research Interests:
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Joanna
Burger is Distinguished Professor of Biology
at Rutgers University. Her main research
interests are 1) Risks from consuming fish,
including consumption patterns, contaminant
levels, risk balancing, risk management, and
communication, 2) Bioindicators of human and
ecological health, 3) Effects of toxic
chemicals on behavioral development, 4)
Using birds as indicators of environmental
exposure and effects, and 5) Ecological risk
and Natural Resource Damage Assessment.
She has worked with EPA, US Fish & Wildlife
Service, Department of Energy, State health
agencies, angler’s organizations,
subsistence fishermen, and the public to
examine the risks from fish consumption,
including developing risk communication,
risk-balancing, and risk management
strategies, as well as public policy issues
for managing this risk.
Together with Dr M. Gochfeld (a physician),
she works to develop bioindicators that can
be used to assess the well-being of both
humans and ecological receptors in a variety
of environments, including Department of
Energy (DOE) sites. Using birds as models,
she has examined the effect of lead,
chromium, manganese, mercury, and other
chemicals on behavioral development of
endpoints that directly affect reproductive
success and survival. This research
identified critical developmental windows
for lead exposure, which differ for
different types of behavior.
For 14 years she has worked with the
Consortium for Risk Evaluation with
Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) to examine
human and environmental health issues at DOE
sites, including Savannah River Site,
Hanford, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Idaho
National Laboratory, and Brookhaven National
Laboratory. For the last five years she
headed the biological component of a CRESP
project to determine whether three
underground nuclear tests detonated long ago
at Amchitka Island have contaminated the
marine food chain, leading to risk to
subsistence Aleuts and to the commercial
fisheries in the region. This work was
comprehensive, iterative, integrative, and
interactive with regulators, Aleuts,
government officials, scientists, and
advocacy groups to form a consensus science
plan that addressed concerns of the safety
of subsistence and commercial foods. |
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