The NIH Almanac

Mission

The mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is to reduce the burden of human illness and disability by understanding how the environment influences the development and progression of human disease. To have the greatest impact on preventing disease and improving human health, NIEHS focuses on basic science, disease-oriented research, global environmental health, and multidisciplinary training for researchers. NIEHS achieves its mission through:

Extramural research and training, funded by grants and contracts, to scientists, environmental health professionals, and other groups worldwide; intramural research conducted by scientists at the NIEHS facility and in partnership with scientists at universities and hospitals; toxicological testing and test validation by the National Toxicology Program; and outreach and communications programs that provide reliable health information to the public and scientific resources to researchers.

Important Events in NIEHS History

June 7, 1960—A study group on the Public Health Service (PHS) mission and organization states that environmental health problems require increased public and private effort, and predicts that a central laboratory facility would be needed.

November 1, 1961—The Committee on Environmental Health Problems recommends to PHS that a national center be established to undertake integrated research and other activities related to environmental health.

September 1964—In the wake of the best-selling book by Rachel Carson, Silent Spring—which forecast the deaths of birds and possibly people from the use of persistent chemicals—Congress authorizes funds to plan a central environmental health research facility.

January 7, 1965—The U.S. Surgeon General announces the establishment of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences as a part of the National Institutes of Health.

September 26, 1967—A deed for 509.25 acres within Research Triangle Park, N.C., is presented to the Surgeon General for a permanent site for the Division of Environmental Health Sciences.

January 12, 1969—The Secretary of the then-Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) elevates the division to Institute status—as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

April 1972—The first edition of Environmental Health Perspectives, an NIEHS scientific journal, is issued.

April 1977—Construction begins on NIEHS' $65.7 million facility.

November 15, 1978—HEW Secretary Joseph Califano announces the establishment of the National Toxicology Program.

July 14, 1981—U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Richard Schweiker approves the reorganization of NIEHS, transferring the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Cause and Prevention bioassay program to NIEHS.

October 5, 1981—The National Toxicology Program is made a permanent activity of HHS.

November 20, 1985—NIEHS is established in law by the Health Research Extension Act of 1985 (Public Law 99-158).

September 14, 1994—NIEHS and collaborators at the University of Utah announce identification of the first breast cancer gene, BRCA1. View Image.

October 10, 1994—Martin Rodbell, NIEHS scientist emeritus and former scientific director, is named co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work in discovering G-proteins, which transmit signals between cells. View Image.

May 12, 1995—NIEHS announces isolation and cloning of a gene that suppresses the spread of prostate cancer.

December 6, 1995—Experiments conducted by NIEHS researchers show that phenolphthalein, a widely used laxative, causes ovarian and other cancers in laboratory rats and mice.

February 6, 1996—NIEHS scientists report that people who are missing the gene GST11 are more likely to get myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS—a serious, often fatal, bone marrow disease.

July 2, 1996—NIEHS researchers find that women who douche more than once a week are about 30% less likely to conceive in a given month than those who do not.

October 29, 1996—The newly completed 4-story laboratory "F Module" is dedicated on the celebration of NIEHS' 30th anniversary.

October 17-18, 1997—NIEHS' Environmental Genome Project is announced to an international audience of scientists. The project is described as one to explore the gene variations (called "polymorphisms," which means "many forms") that influence people's susceptibility to environmental exposures that cause disease in some people, none in others.

1998—NIEHS' Marine and Freshwater Research Centers and the U.S. Navy sponsor the ocean-theme United States Pavilion, complete with an iceberg, at the World Expo in Lisbon, Portugal.

August 10, 1998—NIEHS and the Environmental Protection Agency jointly fund the creation of 8 Children's Environmental Health Research Centers.

June 22, 1999—The new Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods—a group formed by NIEHS, the National Toxicology Program (which is headquartered at NIEHS), and other health and regulatory agencies—for the first time concludes that, in many chemical tests, a non-animal test can replace the use of laboratory animals in a key test of whether a chemical is likely to burn or corrode human skin. Acceptance of this alternative test is followed on December 28, 1999 by acceptance by regulatory agencies of the Murine Local Lymph Node Assay for products causing allergic contact dermatitis, which greatly reduced the number of guinea pigs used in testing.

May 9, 2000—The First National Allergen Survey, led by NIEHS scientists in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, finds more than 45% of U.S. housing stock has bedding with dust mite allergen concentrations that exceed 2 micrograms per gram of dust, a level associated with the development of allergies.

December 14, 2000—NIEHS-supported researchers at The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health publish research findings showing a strong correlation between exposure to particulate matter air pollution and death from all causes including cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. These analyses provide evidence that particulate matter pollution continues to cause adverse health outcomes and strengthens the argument for maintaining air quality standards for this pollutant.

January 2001—Grantees from the University of Southern California publish reports showing modest increases in ambient ozone concentration are associated with increases in school absenteeism.

September 2001—NIEHS-supported grantees in and around New York City joined forces to monitor exposures and advise clean-up crews and residents exposed to hazardous working and living conditions resulting from the terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center. Air monitoring stations were established, and many research studies were begun to determine possible adverse health effects. Grantees from the NIEHS Worker Safety and Education Program were on-site immediately following the collapse of the buildings to provide advice and assistance for protecting the health of the clean-up crews.

November 5, 2001—NIEHS awards $37 million to 5 academic research organizations to form a Toxicogenomics Research Consortium with the Institute's own National Toxicogenomics Center. Building a library of known toxins and the genes they turn "on" or "off," the Center seeks to use an array of cloned genes to review chemicals for toxicity. Further down the road, the technology may be used on individual patients to tailor preventive, diagnostic and treatment methods.

July 3, 2002—An NIEHS analysis of data from 7 European cities suggests that healthy young couples need not jump into expensive reproductive assistance too soon. The study showed that better than 90% of the couples who failed to achieve a pregnancy in their first year of unprotected intercourse achieved conception before a second year was out—without medical assistance.

August 29, 2002—NIEHS-supported researchers at the University of California at San Diego discover that B. anthracis evades the host immune system, using a toxin called lethal factor (LF) to destroy macrophages and spread throughout the body. These results may explain why anthrax infections proceed nearly undetected until the patient is very sick and near death.

April 17, 2003—NIEHS grantees at the Cincinnati-Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Rochester Medical Center find that IQ scores for children with blood lead levels at 10 micrograms/dl were 7.4 points lower than for children at 1 microgram/dl. Surprisingly, the study also concludes that as blood lead increased from 10 to 30 micrograms/dl, there was a more modest decline in IQ scores, indicating that more damage occurs at lower levels for any given exposure. These results emphasize the importance of prevention and add further evidence that there is indeed no safe level of lead exposure.

October 18, 2004—A new study that will look at 50,000 sisters of women diagnosed with breast cancer opens for enrollment across the United States. The largest study of its kind, the Sister Study will investigate environmental and genetic causes of breast cancer.

December 10, 2004—Grantees at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital demonstrate that lifetime lead exposure may increase the risk of developing cataracts, the leading cause of blindness. Men with high levels of lead in the tibia, the larger of the 2 leg bones below the knee, had a 2.5-fold increased risk for cataracts.

May 2005—A comparison study across 7 different laboratories demonstrates how scientists can get more consistent and reliable results when using gene chips, or microarray technologies. Microarrays allow researchers to see which genes are active in both normal and diseased cells. In the past, scientists have had trouble comparing microarray data from different sources. The new study shows that using a standardized process and commercially manufactured microarrays (rather than microarrays made in-house by each lab) leads to the best reproducible results.

May 10, 2005—NIEHS releases "A National Toxicology Program for the 21st Century: A Roadmap for the Future." The Roadmap outlines a plan to strategically position the National Toxicology Program at the forefront for providing scientific data and for guiding the interpretation of those data to maximize their impact on public health. A meeting was held at the National Academy of Sciences to reflect on the history of the National Toxicology Program and its impact on public health since its establishment in 1978 and unveil the plans and directions for the program’s future.

June 1, 2005—NIEHS brings together national and community leaders with researchers to sort out how a child's environment increases the risk for obesity and to identify ways the environment can be changed to address this health epidemic. More than 700 people gathered for a 2-day conference, "Environmental Solutions to Obesity in America's Youth."

February 8, 2006—Two NIH Initiatives Launch Intensive Efforts to Determine Genetic and Environmental Roots of Common Diseases. One initiative boosts NIH funding for a multi-institute effort to identify the genetic and environmental underpinnings of common illnesses. The other initiative launches a public-private partnership between NIH, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, especially Pfizer Global Research & Development of New London, CT, and Affymetrix Inc. of Santa Clara, CA, to accelerate genome association studies to find the genetic roots of widespread sicknesses.

May 1, 2006—The NIEHS Director unveils a new strategic plan aimed at challenging and energizing the scientific community to use environmental health sciences to understand the causes of disease and to improve human health. The plan, New Frontiers in Environmental Sciences and Human Health, fundamentally changes the way NIEHS approaches research. The new strategy emphasizes research focused on complex human disease, and calls for inter-disciplinary teams of scientists to investigate a broad spectrum of disease factors, including environmental agents, genetics, age, diet, and activity levels.

October 25, 2006—A teleconference with the NIEHS Director, leading scientific experts, and the media preceded a 2-day meeting at which researchers announce they have successfully sequenced the DNA of 15 mouse strains most commonly used in biomedical research. More than 8.3 million genetic variations, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), were discovered among the genomes of the 15 mouse strains, and the data are now available on a public website.

May 16, 2007—Researchers announce that there is strong evidence a chemical referred to as hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, causes cancer in laboratory animals when it is consumed in drinking water. The two-year study conducted by the National Toxicology Program shows that animals given hexavalent chromium developed malignant tumors. Earlier studies had shown that hexavalent chromium causes lung cancer in humans in certain occupational settings as a result of inhalation exposure. The new findings show that it can also cause cancer in animals when administered orally.

October 9, 2007—A report issued by the National Academies of Sciences recognizes the importance of toxicogenomics in predicting effects on human health and recommends the integration of toxicogenomics into regulatory decision making. Toxicogenomic technologies provide tools to better understand the mechanisms through which environmental agents initiate and advance disease processes. They can also provide important information to help identify individuals who are more susceptible to disease risks posed by certain environmental agents than the general population.

NIEHS Directors

Name	In Office from	To
Paul Kotin	November 1, 1966	February 28, 1971
David P. Rall	March 1, 1971	October 1, 1990
David G. Hoel (Acting)	October 1990	June 1991
Kenneth Olden	June 18, 1991	May 21, 2005
David A. Schwartz	May 22, 2005	August 19, 2007
Samuel H. Wilson (Acting)	August 20, 2007	December, 2008
Linda S. Birnbaum, Ph.D., D.A.B.T., A.T.S.	December 3, 2008	Present

Programs

The NIEHS Office of the Director provides additional oversight and program development in the following areas:

Exposure Biology Program of the NIH Genes and Environment Initiative

The NIEHS leads the Exposure Biology Program, one of the two main components of the NIH Genes and Environment Initiative. The Exposure Biology Program focuses on the development of innovative technologies to measure environmental exposures, diet, physical activity, psychosocial stress, and addictive substances that contribute to the development of disease.

Exposure Biology Program of the National Children’s Study

The NIEHS leads the Exposure Biology Program as it relates to the National Children’s Study (http://www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov/). The study is designed to examine the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of more than 100,000 children across the United States, following them from before birth until age 21. The Exposure Biology Program focuses on the development of innovative technologies to measure environmental exposures, diet, physical activity, psychosocial stress, and addictive substances that contribute to the development of disease.

NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Program

The goals of the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Program are to create an international committee; develop standardized platforms, procedures, and reagents for epigenomics research; conduct demonstration projects to evaluate how epigenomes change; develop new technologies for single-cell epigenomic analysis and in vivo imaging of epigenetic activity; and create a public data resource to accelerate the application of epigenomics approaches. Dr. Wilson is co-chair of this program.

NAS/NRC Review of Implementation of the NIEHS Strategic Plan

The NIEHS is engaged with the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council in a review of the implementation of the 2006 NIEHS Strategic Plan. The goal of this effort is to review progress to date of the Institute in implementing the plan, and to assess whether the focus and balance of the plan's goals continue to be appropriate to the mission and direction of the NIEHS.

Education and Biomedical Research Development

This office is the focal point of the NIEHS for establishing goals and developing programs to assure participation and success in NIEHS research and training programs, minority training and environmental health research issues, and community outreach initiatives. Included in these activities are K-12 environmental health sciences education programs, minority health research and training programs, environmental health research and training programs at minority institutions, and research and training programs that address low-income and underserved populations. Marian Johnson-Thompson directs the office and also chairs the NIEHS Institutional Review Board.

NanoHealth Enterprise Initiative

The NIEHS is engaged in efforts to establish an NIH NanoHealth Enterprise. This broad-based initiative is designed to investigate the fundamental physico-chemical interactions of ENM with biological systems, and the use of nanotechnology research as a tool for exploring cellular and molecular structure function relationships. The initiative outlines an integrated, interdisciplinary program that draws upon the expertise and interests of the NIH Institutes and Centers, along with other public and private partners to address critical research needs for the safe development of nanoscale materials and devices.

Standing Committee on Identifying and Quantifying Environmental Health Risks

The NIEHS supports the creation of a Standing Committee on Identifying and Quantifying Environmental Health Risks within the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. The goal of this committee is to provide a public forum for communication among government, industry, non- governmental groups, the academic community, and the public about scientific advances that can be used in the identification, quantification, and management of the impacts of environmental agents on human health.

Translational Research in DNA Repair

As part of the implementation of the NIEHS Strategic Plan, the ODD works with the Division of Extramural Research and Training to implement an initiative designed to foster translational research in DNA repair. The program is designed to serve as a model for translation of cross-disciplinary basic research results to clinical practice.

Implementation of the NTP Vision and Roadmap

The NIEHS Office of the Director is engaged in a long-term collaboration with the National Toxicology Program to assist in efforts to achieve the program’s Vision & Roadmap of future activities, particularly contributing to the development of new tools for high-throughput screening and new animal models of genetic susceptibility.

Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine

The NIEHS was instrumental in the establishment of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine, and continues to sponsor the panel with the NIEHS acting director as a member. The Roundtable was established to provide a mechanism for parties interested in environmental health from the academic, industrial, and federal research perspectives to meet and discuss sensitive and difficult issues of mutual interest in a neutral setting. The purpose is to foster dialogue and discussion among sectors and institutions, and to illuminate issues, not resolve them. Among the landmark publications in the Roundtable’s history is the seminal 2001 report, Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental Health for the 21st Century.