“There’s a need for professional training to evaluate the health effects of the chemicals we’re exposed to from pollution in water, from pharmaceuticals, or from airborne contaminants,” Vanden Heuvel says. “If we look at cancer, for instance, there are basically two major causative factors: genetic predisposition and environment. Cancer is believed to be 90 percent environmentally determined, and that’s just one disease with a very strong environmental component. Increasingly, many diseases are believed to have environmental components, including obesity, diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease.

“The prevalence of asthma, for example, has been rising drastically over the last 20 years. The perception is that the increase must be environmentally triggered because genetically we haven’t changed that much. So what in our environment has changed? Is it diet, pollution, or some pharmacological factor? If we know how chemicals interfere with our normal functioning, if we can determine how disease arises, toxicology can identify the chemicals that influence the disease process. If we know the mechanics, we can also search for a cure.”

Vanden Heuvel reports that the undergraduate program debuted at a time of “good critical mass” after six years of building the department’s faculty and graduate program, along with heightened public perception of pollution and health risks.

“There’s a lot of conversation about what we’re doing to the environment and to our bodies, and only rudimentary public education of how chemicals impact human health,” he says. “So the timing is right from both avenues: with increased public perception comes the knowledge that the people we train will have jobs when they’re done, or they will be trained to continue their education in graduate school.”