Superfund Basic Research and Training Program

The summary for the Superfund Basic Research and Training Program grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Superfund Basic Research and Training Program: The mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is to promote research that will ultimately reduce the burden of human illness and dysfunction from environmental causes. Complementary to this mission are the goals of the national Superfund Program, established by Congress in 1980 to: identify uncontrolled hazardous wastes; characterize the impacts of hazardous waste sites and emergency releases on the surrounding environment (i.e., communities, ecological systems, and ambient air, soil, water); and, institute control or remediation approaches to minimize risk from exposure to these contaminants. With the 1980 passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), better known as Superfund, it soon became clear that the strategies for the cleanup of Superfund sites, and the technologies available to implement these cleanups, were inadequate to address the magnitude and complexity of the problem. In 1986, the NIEHS Hazardous Substances Basic Research and Training Program [the Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP)] was created under the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA). Congress, under SARA, authorized NIEHS to develop a university-based program of basic research and training grants to address the wide array of scientific uncertainties facing the national Superfund Program. The assignment of the SBRP to the NIEHS underscored an emphasis on human health effects, evaluation and prevention. However, the Program was mandated to support research that moved beyond the biomedical arena. Inclusion of non-traditional NIH research such as the modeling of fate and transport processes and the development of remediation technologies for environmental contaminants became part of a new paradigm for environmental health research. This paradigm supports the philosophy that the long-term improvement of public health will require the integration of biomedical, geological and engineering sciences to develop and apply a full range of primary prevention strategies. Therefore, the SBRP, supports coordinated multi-project, multidisciplinary university-based programs that link biomedical research with related engineering, hydrogeologic and ecologic research. The scientific parameters under which the SBRP operates were included in the SARA legislation, which mandates that the research funded by this Program should include development of (1) methods and technologies to detect hazardous substances in the environment; (2) advanced techniques for the detection, assessment, and evaluation of the effect on human health of hazardous substances; (3) methods to assess the risks to human health presented by hazardous substances; and (4) basic biological, chemical, and physical methods to reduce the amount and toxicity of hazardous substances. Accordingly, NIEHS is proposing the continuation of the SBRP to address these mandates. Grants made under the SBRP will be for coordinated, multi-project, multi- and interdisciplinary programs. The objective remains to establish and maintain a unique Program that links and integrates biomedical research with related engineering, hydrogeologic, and ecologic components. In addition, the SBRP is committed to the concept that the Program is more than just a basic research program, and that to truly be effective it must foster the training of graduate and post doctoral students and be proactive in translating the scientific accomplishments emanating from the Program to its stakeholders -- whether to the public through community outreach, to industry via technology transfer, or to government through partnerships. Therefore, NIEHS has included training, community outreach and the translation of research to appropriate audiences as components of this solicitation. [NOTE: Within this document the use of the word "Program" with an uppercase "P" is used to denote the SBRP, whereas "program" with a lower case "p" denotes the research program of the individual applicant.]