The grant funded jointly by the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences will enable researchers to secure the necessary "pilot data" to develop the Center's initial research projects into larger initiatives, Karagas said.
The Center's projects have various goals, ranging from determining the effect of arsenic levels on maternal and child immune function to examining the effect of food-borne arsenic on infants, Karagas said.
Researchers at the Center are well-equipped to study arsenic's effects on humans due to the preponderance of the toxic metal in New Hampshire, Jiang Gui, a DMS biostatistician, said.
"Arsenic exposure is a very unique phenomenon in the New England area because we have sparse populations and a lot of private wells," he said.
Unlike in larger towns with public water supplies, exposure to environmental contaminants in drinking water is highly variable in New Hampshire since each property draws its water from private wells, according to Gui. Some properties have levels of arsenic in their wells that exceed the EPA's limit, he said.
One of the Center's projects will cross reference areas containing high concentrations of arsenic in their drinking water with areas whose populations exhibit high levels of birth defects in order to uncover a potential correlative relationship, Gui explained.
The significant number of Dartmouth scientists who have focused their research on arsenic made the College an attractive recipient for the grant, according to Gui.
"We have a collection of epidemiologists, biostatisticians, biologists and geologists who have already put a lot of effort into this problem," he said. "This Center brings everyone together so that we can combine our previous work and try to make it more focused."
Karagas said she envisions the Center playing a critical role in public dialogue surrounding the federal government's regulation of toxic chemicals.
"One thing we try to do is to inform public health policy and regulation," she said. "That's the goal of our research."
The Center is an offshoot of a project within the College's Toxic Metals Research Program, which researches the effects of various toxic metals on human and environmental health, according to Richard Enelow, professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology at DMS.
The Center is one of six nationwide that will be studying the effects of pollutants on children's health, The Dartmouth previously reported.
"The effects of arsenic on biological systems are not well understood at all," he said. "Everybody knows it's poisonous but nobody knows exactly what that means and how it works."
This knowledge gap is particularly prevalent when examining how arsenic contamination impacts child and reproductive health, Karagas said.
The accuracy of EPA arsenic standards are questionable given this knowledge deficit surrounding the metal, according to Gui.
"The speculation is that the current standard is too loose," he said, adding that the Center's new research may lead to revisions in EPA arsenic guidelines.
Researchers of environmental pollutants must ultimately understand the repercussions of several interacting toxins on the human body because no individual is infected with only one toxin at a time, Enelow said.
"You have to begin to take into account that there are effects that have to do with not only the cumulative effects of the individual toxins, but also the synergies that occur both positively and negatively," he said. "It's going to be many, many years before we begin to understand the impact of the combinations of the different toxic agents which are undoubtedly all out there."
The Center also plans to focus on community engagement and keep the group's work in touch with the local population's needs, Karagas said.
Provost Carol Folt will serve as associate director of the Center.
