Biostatistics

Under the direction of Dr. Seamus Thompson, professor of clinical Biostatistics and Neurology, the Statistical Analysis Center for Clinical Trials (SAC) partners with Columbia’s NIEHS Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan and the NIEHS Center at Johns Hopkins to house the World Trade Center (WTC) Contaminants Database.

Collaboration with the NIEHS Center at Johns Hopkins on exposure of teamsters who transported debris from the site for disposal led to the proposal to develop a database of both pre- and post-September 11 contaminant levels in New York City. The Database now stores extensive information (more than 30 million datapoints) from air monitoring sites around the tri-state area both pre- and post 9/11.

By providing statistical and data management expertise, the SAC enables researchers to put WTC-related contaminant levels into perspective and find compositional tracers of WTC contaminant fluxes that can be used to identify and quantify the transport and deposition of WTC emissions. The database is open to the public through the NIEHS web site.