Media contact: Yvonne Taunton
Senior Tasha Curiel used brain imaging data from a previous UAB study to investigate the effects of a toxic environment on developing brains.In the North Birmingham communities of Collegeville, Fairmont and Harriman Park, the rumble of cars and jets makes it impossible to forget that Interstate 65 and the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport are close at hand. But in the ground beneath their feet, the people who live in the communities’ 2,000 residential properties and study in its three schools can feel the silent threat of decades of heavy industry.
A host of industrial areas, including two coke oven plants, asphalt plants, pipe manufacturing facilities, steel mills and quarries, have operated and in some cases still operate here. Over the years, these plants and others have deposited lead, arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene into the soil, earning this area designation as the 35th Avenue Superfund site, one of 10 Superfund sites managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Alabama.
Lead story
More than 50,000 tons of contaminated soil has already been removed from 400 properties that fall within the 35th Avenue site. But some effects of the toxic environment may never be eliminated.
| “Exposure to environmental toxins at an early age appears to disrupt neural development and important cognitive-emotional processes, including emotion regulation, decision-making and executive functions.” |
Tasha Curiel, a UAB senior majoring in psychology, grew up in Birmingham and has always been interested in environmental issues. She is studying the relationship between environmental toxins and the volume of grey matter in the brains of young residents of the 35th Avenue site. Her work in the lab of David Knight, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and director of its behavioral neuroscience doctoral program, earned her first place in the Social and Behavioral Science category at the UAB Spring Expo in mid-April. The Expo features posters and presentations by hundreds of undergraduate researchers.
Prior research has found that lead exposure is associated with decreased grey matter volume in humans, Curiel says. Benzo(a)pyrene, meanwhile, has been shown to impact emotional regulation in rodents exposed before birth. “Exposure to environmental toxins at an early age appears to disrupt neural development and important cognitive-emotional processes, including emotion regulation, decision-making and executive functions,” Curiel wrote in her abstract. Using data from a large study known as Healthy Passages — which collected brain imaging to look at the effects of violence on young people — Curiel is exploring whether scans from participants who lived in or near the Superfund site during the Healthy Passages study reveal brain changes not found in participants who lived outside the area.
Unexpected findings
“I compared the brain volume data of the participants who lived within a mile of the Superfund site to brain volume data from participants who lived farther away,” Curiel said. Healthy Passages included data from 350 participants; she was able to examine scans from 20 participants who lived in the 35th Avenue site area, along with 20 controls (matched by race, gender and education level) who lived outside the area.
| Curiel's project earned first place in the Social and Behavioral Science category at the UAB Spring Expo in mid-April |
“I hypothesized that I’d see decreased grey matter volumes,” consistent with previous research on exposure to environmental toxins, Curiel said. Instead, as she reported at the UAB Spring Expo, “I found the opposite in three areas of the brain” — the right and left hippocampus and the left amygdala.
“It is very interesting,” but still too early in the research to speak to the implications, Curiel said. She would like to keep the investigation going after her planned graduation in August. Curiel intends to go to graduate school to train as a counselor and work with adolescents, but first she wants to “take a year to work and volunteer,” she said. “I hope to stay in the lab past graduation to continue the research.”
In addition to Curiel, authors of the study, “Grey Matter Volume of the Hippocampus and Thalamus vary with Proximity to Birmingham’s Superfund Site,” included Knight; professor Sylvie Mrug, Ph.D.; and graduate students Heather Dark and Juliann Purcell.