Dr. Patrick Parsons, Director of the Division of Environmental Health Sciences (DEHS) and Dr. Kurunthachalam Kannan, Deputy Director of DEHS, attended the 2026 International Society of Exposure Science (ISES) annual meeting, in Vancouver, Canada, October 4-8, 2026.
Dr. Parsons gave an invited presentation entitled, “Biomonitoring New York: a 2021-2025 Population-Based Assessment of Exposure to Metals, PFAS and Pesticides across Five Regions of the State Outside of NY City”. This study, supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant funding, included multiple coauthors from DEHS and from the Bureau of Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology as well as the Center for Environmental Health (CEH).
Dr. Parsons also co-chaired a session on National Biomonitoring Programs that included studies from China, France, Canada, Japan, and Ireland. Dr. Kurunthachalam Kannan gave an invited presentation titled, “Multiclass methods and harmonization of data quality in targeted quantitative analysis of environmental chemicals”.
Dr. Kannan’s research team also presented four poster papers:
- A Method for the Quantification of Micro- and Nanoplastics in Animal Tissues Using Pyrolysis-GC/MS
- Microplastics and Nanoplastics in Infant Formulas from the United States: Implications for Early-Life Exposure
- Release of Micro- and Nanoplastics from Plastic Food Contact Materials under Simulated Use Conditions
- A liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry method for quantifying oxidative stress, nitrative stress, metabolic, and inflammatory biomarkers in serum with paired urine comparison.
This meeting brought together exposure scientists from across the globe, including the return of federal program officers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the CDC. At this meeting, participants discussed scientific developments in emerging environmental contaminants, analytical methods to assess human exposures, and biomonitoring study design. In addition, social determinants of chemical exposure, environmental public health tracking, environmental epidemiology, and several other topics in public health relevant to the research mission of DEHS were discussed.