Chemical Insights Research Institute (CIRI), a nonprofit organization of Underwriters Laboratories Inc., confirms its commitment to identifying human health threats and to delivering the highest quality chemical and other pollutant exposure research for insights to improve people’s lives. CIRI leads research on emerging technologies such as 3D printing emissions and flame retardant usage in consumer products, studies how these exposures create threats to human health and evaluates strategies for reducing risks.
“CIRI is on the front lines of researching these developing threats and uses rigorous laboratory testing to provide actionable data to help manufacturers, educators, healthcare providers and consumers respond for protecting health,” says Dr. Marilyn Black, vice president and senior technical advisor for CIRI.
As a research institute of Underwriters Laboratories, CIRI benefits from a recently announced $1.8 billion commitment to global safety science research. With this investment, CIRI, in collaboration with other research institutes of Underwriters Laboratories, reportedly will expand its focus on discovery across a broad range of critical fields – from understanding the community health implications of wildfire events to assessing health outcomes of young children in daycare centers exposed to daily urban air pollution.
“We are pleased to support CIRI’s human health research,” says Terrence Brady, president and CEO of Underwriters Laboratories, “as it addresses rapidly emerging chemical and environmental safety threats facing societies today.”
CIRI 2022 research initiatives include:
- 3D printing: Evaluating current additive manufacturing technologies and the effects of their pollutant releases on human health;
- Flame retardants and furniture flammability: Assessing flame retardant usage in consumer products, their exposure levels, routes of human exposure and evaluation of flammability control processes without the use of flame retardants;
- Global air pollution: Identifying chemical and particle sources of indoor and outdoor air pollution, its sources and impact on human health and evaluating processes for reducing exposures to improve health outcomes;
- Chemical exposure: Using innovative measurement tools, determining consumer exposure to chemicals and evaluating biological responses of toddlers in daycare settings from air pollution exposure;
- E-cigarette and vaping: Evaluating human intake of chemicals and particulate aerosols using a range of generation models and e-liquids, and measuring human toxicity; and
- Wildfires: Evaluating community health risks of wildfires by measuring chemical and PM2.5 emissions in wildfire smoke and resulting human health outcomes.
To support this research, CIRI is expanding its pollutant exposure laboratory and growing its toxicology health sciences program. The team will focus on how biological factors may increase susceptibility to environmental disease.
For more information, visit www.chemicalinsights.org
