Please join the leaders of the Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research for the launch of their seminar series. Presenters will be Dr. Carol Miller and Dr. Melissa Runge-Morris.

The Center for Leadership in Environmental Awareness and Research (CLEAR) is a new National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health Superfund Research Program center. The center is dedicated to understanding and mitigating adverse birth outcomes and serious developmental health problems that have been associated with urban environmental exposure to volatile organic chemicals, a special class of pollutants found in the subsurface of post-industrial cities like Detroit. Headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, CLEAR will use Detroit as a study site, which has the highest preterm birth rate in the country (15.2%) and is located in a state where 37 of the 67 Superfund sites must manage VOC contamination. Urban legacy and emerging environmental contaminants are implicated as etiologic factors in adverse reproductive health effects. CLEAR hypothesizes that VOC exposure through vapor intrusion during early life incites inflammatory responses in maternal tissues and/or the developing offspring that re-program the developing immune and other critical systems, setting the stage for PTB and/or associated adverse health outcomes. This seminar will introduce and outline the research aims of the new CLEAR center at Wayne State University.