A
quarter century ago, Gov.
Thomas Kean provided $9 million to create an environmental and occupational
health sciences institute to attack rampant environmental problems due to toxic
metals and chemicals in New Jersey’s water resources, soil and air. Under the
leadership of Bernard Goldstein, its first director, the institute gathered a
cadre of experts in toxicology, risk assessment, exposure, medicine, community
outreach and teaching who had been scattered among several departments at
Rutgers and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

The
resulting synergy became a model of effectiveness nationwide, with resources
from basic research to environmental and exposure testing to clinical
treatment. In its lifetime, EOHSI has identified and contributed to remediation
of health problems caused by MTBE in gasoline, summertime smog, mercury in
fish, arsenic in well water, chromium and lead in soil and  building materials, and  the dust and debris that caused respiratory
illness in rescue workers and residents at the World Trade Center site. EOHSI
houses New Jersey’s only medical monitoring clinic to treat World Trade Center
first responders and is home of the CounterAct Center for treatment of highly
toxic chemical exposure.

The institute’s research continues to examine
potential new hazards such as those posed by nanomaterials, and how changes in lifestyle
and behavior may create new hazards and exposures to be resolved by EOHSI research.