Integrated Studies of Food Safety and Environmental Management

Non-Technical Summary:<br/>
Pesticides will remain to be the cornerstones of integrated pest management to meet the need of growing demand for food and fiber production. Every dollar ($1) that is spent on pesticides for crops yields approximately four dollars in crops saved. In 2007, user expenditures on pesticides were $12.4 billion and 1.1 billion lbs of pesticide active ingredient were used in the U.S.. A significant portion of applied pesticides will inevitably end up in foods and the environment, which they can adversely affect human and environmental health. When used properly pesticides are considered safe, yet pesticide exposure ranks among the greatest health concerns of farmers and farm workers as well as the general public. Exposures of pesticides through foods and the contaminated environment are significant concerns of the public. Therefore, understanding effects of pesticides and other toxic chemicals on target and non-target species will improve our ability to predict and integrate current and potential pest management strategies, providing environmentally sound and cost effective approaches to pest management. These approaches will lead to reduced application of pesticides. In this project, we anticipate taking an integrated approach to advance knowledge and science-based strategies to prevent or mitigate unacceptable adverse impacts of toxic chemicals on humans and the environment. We expect to develop new methods that are applicable to pesticide exposure studies, environmental monitoring and food safety. We also expect to develop proteomics methods that are applicable to food microbial contamination monitoring, protein structure and function elucidation, and protein profiling and quantitation in a biological system. Usage of the methods (citation) is an outcome indicator. New Knowledge on protein structures and functions is another outcome. Information of protein amino acid sequences and structures submitted to the public databases is an outcome indicator. Understanding of microbial adaptation to and transformation mechanisms of toxic substances lays a solid foundation for bioremediation technologies for environmental cleanup and restoration. Safe and effective pesticides registered for uses on minor crops are outcome of the project. Proper uses and proper handling of pesticides and practices that handlers adopted are outcomes of this project. The other outcomes include that feedback to workers about their exposure provide a teachable moment for pesticide education and provide motivation to obtain additional pesticide education. Another outcome is the WIC participants who accept nutritional advice on appropriate fish choices to lower mercury and arsenic while emphasizing health benefits of fish. Undergraduate and graduate students who receive training from this project are also outcome as they are the next generation of scientists.
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Approach:<br/>
Objective-1. We anticipate developing rapid, rugged immunoassays and proteomic methods for food and environmental analyses. The research effort will focus on engineering peroxidases being tolerant to large pH changes, high concentrations of organic solvents and salts and high temperature. We will focus on development of mass spectrometry (MS) based proteomics methods for research on food microbial contamination, microbial transformation of and adaptation to toxic substances, biomarker discoveries for pesticide exposure. In addition, proteomic methods will be developed to study the structure and function of enzymes of interests such as palm peroxidases. The equipment needed is available in this lab.
<P>Objective-2. Assays developed in Objective-1 will be applied to study the fate of pesticides and other chemicals in the environment, environmental monitoring, microbial transformations of contaminants, and food analysis. We will primarily reply on mass spectrometry for proteomic analyses to elucidate adaptation mechanisms for bacterial response to pesticides as well as mechanisms of degradation of pesticides. Genomic and metabolomic techniques will be used to aid the proteomic studies. Organic contaminants in foods and environmental matrices will be analyzed according to the methods established in this laboratory.
<P>Objective-3. Pesticide analyses will be carried out to obtain residue data to support regulatory clearances for use of pesticides on minor crops. The analysis processes include analytical method validation, sample receiving, sample preparation and pretreatment, sample extraction, cleanup and fractionation, sample analysis, data collection and calculation, report, sample storage study, and quality assurance. All work is done according to the good laboratory practices well established in the laboratory. All data are calculated and organized into a report, submitted to the quality assurance unit. A quality assurance officer audits raw data and reports and notices laboratory analysts the QA findings and recommendations. The analysts address the QA findings and recommendations, and send the report, replies and documentation of corrective actions to the quality assurance unit again. The quality assurance officer then sends the final report, the QA report and all the documentation of the project to the IR-4 headquarters at Rutgers. The IR-4 headquarters, in turn, sends the report to the U.S. EPA for clearance review and approval for use of the pesticide on the crop studied.
<P>Objective-4. We will collaborate with farmers and the State of Hawaii Department of Agriculture Pesticides Branch for pesticide handling and use practices, and potential exposure pathways. The proposed studies will gain information on exposure levels to both new pesticides and for populations that have not been well studied, such as bird chasers.