Michele Marcus
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
In 1973, a factory accidentally shipped a flame-retardant chemical, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), to Michigan farms instead of a livestock nutritional supplement. The chemical entered the state's food supply and exposed an estimated nine million people.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
polybrominated biphenyl
brominated flame retardants
endocrine disrupting chemicals
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Determine whether cancer incidence and mortality are higher in the Michigan PBB Registry than in the general U.S. population, using standardized incidence and mortality ratios from linked death and state cancer registry data.
- Test whether blood PBB levels measured at multiple timepoints are associated with cancer incidence, mortality and time to these events, using longitudinal and survival models.
- Compare PBB–cancer associations by life stage at exposure (in utero, childhood or adulthood), taking advantage of the defined 1973 exposure window.
- Review a biorepository of more than 35,000 stored samples to identify pre- and post-diagnosis samples for future nested case-control studies of cancer mechanisms.
More about the research
Fifty years later, the affected community still lacks a clear answer to a central question: did PBB raise their risk of cancer? PBB is no longer made in the U.S., but it resembles flame retardants still in use and shares worrying traits with other modern chemicals. It is fat-soluble, lasts a long time in the body and resists breakdown in the environment. PBB is also an endocrine disruptor, a chemical that interferes with hormones.
Why it matters
The results could give Michigan residents exposed to PBB, and their descendants, evidence to discuss cancer screening with their doctors. The study may also serve as a model for judging cancer risk from similar endocrine-disrupting chemicals and brominated flame retardants still in use today. Its biorepository work prepares for future studies of how such chemicals might cause cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tongzhang Zheng
Brown University, RI·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether pre-diagnosis blood levels of PFAS, especially PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS, predict later renal cell carcinoma, comparing about 650 cases with 1,300 matched controls from five US cohorts.
Cetewayo Rashid
University of Kentucky, KY·Pharmacology
Test whether activation of PXR, a nuclear receptor that senses foreign chemicals, drives liver-specific insulin resistance in male mice fed diets containing the flame retardant TDCPP, using mice engineered to carry the human PXR gene.
Xuehong Zhang
Yale University, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure PFAS levels in pre-diagnosis plasma from six pooled cohorts and estimate how they relate to later liver cancer risk, overall and by race/ethnicity and hepatitis B/C status, in a nested case-control design.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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