The Center focuses on developing collaborative research and outreach programs and obtaining financial support for them. An important aspect of these activities is to continue to identify areas of mutual scientific interest among faculty at UNMC, UNL, the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) and the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK).

Public awareness of environmental hazards has grown tremendously over the past four decades. Toxicologists and other environmental and population scientists play an essential role in ensuring that we are not endangering our health or the environment with the products and by-products of modern and comfortable living. This role has grown with increased demands for new and better ways to determine the potential harmful effects of chemical agents, development of conditions under which toxic chemicals can be used safely, assessment of the probability that particular chemicals present a significant risk to human health and/or the environment, and the establishment of rules and regulations aimed at protecting and preserving human health and the environment.

In 1997 the University of Nebraska Center for Environmental Toxicology was established with faculty from UNMC and UNL. In the past decade it has grown to more than 50 faculty members at UNMC, UNL and UNO. Its main function has been to administer the Toxicology Graduate Program, which is now being used as the basis for the proposed Environmental Health, Occupational Health, and Toxicology Graduate Program, to be administered by the Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health (DEAOH), College of Public Health.

Research interests of the faculty in the Center for Environmental Health and Toxicology cover a spectrum of relevant science encompassing chemical and biological aspects of environmental health and toxicology. Key research interests of the current faculty include the following:

• analysis of environmental pollutants and their relationship to human and environmental health;
• toxins in foods (including mycotoxins, additives, allergens and contaminants);
• inflammatory responses to organic dusts related to production agriculture;
• epidemiology of environmental and occupational disease;
• mechanisms of dietary modulation of cancer;
• immunotoxicology of chemicals and immunoassays for risk assessment;
• gene-environment interactions;
• structure-function relationships in immunologically active peptides;
• formation of nitrosamines and mechanisms of carcinogenesis by nitrosamines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, arylamines and estrogens;
• mechanisms of DNA damage by carcinogens and other toxins;
• effects of toxins on the liver, kidney and central nervous system;
• mechanisms of ethanol toxicity;
• fate, transport and biological effects of agrichemicals and other contaminants in ground and surface waters and soil;
• environmental remediation and restoration.