RALEIGH, NC / ACCESSWIRE / September 27, 2017 / The dynamic future uses and societal benefits that promise to evolve from the Environmental Genome (www.environmentalgenome.org) were the focus of a two-day August event in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. The meeting comprised a carefully selected group of talented attendees, including open data experts, state environmental administrators, former university presidents, public health scientists, maternal health researchers, consumer product specialists, representatives of major petroleum and chemical companies, academic faculty, and international technology policy experts.
The participants forecast a broad range of significant utilizations for the Environmental Genome data, while considering in detail over twelve areas of impact. Among the concepts discussed were:
- Safer Consumer Products - science-based alternative analysis and scorecards for more efficient and environmentally sensitive manufacturing processes (direct application in California)
- Government uses of the EG database in national security operations
- Reducing cancer and chronic disease risk through geographic, income disparity, epigenetic, and exposure insights gleaned from novel analytics applied to the EG database (development of new analytics for carcinogenic emissions from chemical processing)
- Assisting industry innovations to increase competitiveness of U.S. industries, including possible reshoring of chemical production (example, assessment of economic value of chemical losses, now on whole value chain basis)
- New opportunities for educational uses in engineering and public policy curricula
A strategic planning process will now address, among other important steps, several preliminary demonstrations of the Environmental Genome database analytics. Critical pathways for the development of new mapping teams in the U.S. and overseas will be clearly identified. The open-access EG database is a non-profit effort to provide usable data in an era where access to government data may become increasingly restricted. The attendees spoke with one voice in unanimous support for a global effort to map the full Environmental Genome in order to achieve a set of high-impact societal benefits.
Sponsorship for this meeting was received from the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology, & Science, the American Chemical Society's Green Chemistry Institute, the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, and the Environmental Genome Initiative (www.environmentalgenome.org). The news release on the description and goals of the Vision Workshop was republished 1,114 times in both science and general news outlets prior to the meeting.
For more information, contact Dr. Michael Overcash ([email protected]; 919-571-8989).
SOURCE: Environmental Genome Initiative