Laboratory History

The Environmental Health Advanced Systems Laboratory (EHASL) has been a consistent innovator in the field of environmental risk assessment, environmental health, and epidemiology since its founding in 1992. The mission of the laboratory is to conduct research in the development and application of computer-based technology for exposure assessment in environmental health studies. The laboratory is a stand-alone unit in the Department of Environmental Health at Colorado State University, with funding primarily from research awards and contracts from federal agencies and private foundations. The EHASL has worked cooperatively with the US Environmental Protection Agency, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control, EROS Data Center, and numerous state and local agencies during the last 10 years on a variety of projects ranging from ground water modeling to pesticide transport and image classification.

The laboratory supports research associates, post-doctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate research assistants, private consultants, and other support staff. The staff is multi-disciplinary with expertise in geography, computer science, earth science, and engineering. Primary research focus has been spatial analysis methods for application in health risk assessment, especially regarding misclassification of exposure, reconstruction of exposure scenarios, and time scales for epidemiological studies of fugitive agricultural chemicals in the environment, and for epidemiological studies of drinking water contaminants. Computer-based technology employed in these studies include simulated fate and transport modeling of contaminants in air, soil, and water, processing of remotely sensed data from satellite imagery, large relational database development, and geographic information systems (GIS).