Branch Responsibilities

The Surveillance and Registries Branch designs and conducts ongoing surveillance programs and establishes and maintains registries of persons exposed to toxic substances.

Surveillance

Surveillance is the ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health data. The final link of the surveillance chain is the application of health data to the prevention and control of disease.

Registries

A registry is a database that includes information about people with specific exposures or diseases. The data are collected when a person is identified as having been exposed to a specific contaminant or event (e.g., dioxin registry or World Trade Center health registry). The data are maintained over time and are intended to be used in epidemiologic studies to examine long-term health outcomes (exposure registries) or risk factors for illness (disease registries).

Surveillance Team

Designs and conducts ongoing surveillance programs to collect,   analyze, and interpret health data related to persons exposed to hazardous substances. The team’s responsibilities include:

• Coordinate and maintain the Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) system.
• Collect and analyze information about releases or spills involving hazardous substances including the substance(s) released, number of victims, number and types of injuries, and number of evacuations.
• Distribute information to the public and to public health officials for planning, prevention, and control purposes.
• Use the collected data to develop interventions and prevention activities to reduce injury and death from hazardous substances emergency events.

Registries Team

Establishes and maintains registries of persons exposed to toxic substances and persons with particular diseases. The team’s responsibilities include:

• Collect, analyze, and circulate information about registrants, including illnesses and exposures.
• Provide information to registrants about health services and other services available to them.
  

Surveillance and Registries Branch Highlights

Surveillance

• Case-Control Study of Environmental Exposures and Genetic Susceptibility with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), in Ohio, Missouri, and Texas. To extend and improve upon previous research, this case-control study has a case-only component: it examines the joint role of select environmental exposures and candidate genes as potential MS risk factors.

• Determining Prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in Communities Living Around Hazardous Waste Sites, in Missouri, Illinois, Oregon, Texas, and Massachusetts. Through this cooperative agreement program, funded partners will determine the prevalence of neurological conditions for which little if any existing data are available.

• Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) System. The HSEES system collects and analyzes information about releases of hazardous substances and threatened releases that result in public health action such as an evacuation. The goal of HSEES is to reduce the morbidity (injury) and mortality (death) resulting from hazardous substances events.

• Medical Screening and Surveillance for Individuals Exposed to Asbestos (MASSA), Libby, Montana. In collaboration with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, this project provides for early detection, for evaluation of progression, and appropriate intervention referral for pleural and other lung abnormalities related to asbestos exposure.

Registries

• National Exposure Registry (NER). The National Exposure Registry lists people exposed to benzene, trichlorethylene (TCE), dioxin, and 1, 1, 1- trichloroethane (TCA) at various sites in the United States. The registry helps scientists understand how long-term exposure to hazardous substances may affect human health.

• Tremolite Asbestos Registry (TAR). This is a registry of people exposed to tremolite asbestos in and from Libby, Montana. The types of information collected for the TAR include contact, demographic, exposure, and health outcome.

• World Trade Center (WTC) Health Registry. The WTC Health Registry is a comprehensive and confidential health survey of persons in the lower Manhattan area of New York City who were most directly exposed to the environmental effects of the events of 9/11/2001.