Superfund Research Program


The Superfund Research Program was created within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 1986 under the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act. The SRP is a university-based research program that supports the national Superfund program by addressing a wide variety of scientific concerns.
The SRP has a broad mandate including:
  1. The development of methods and resources to detect hazardous substances in the environment.
  2. The improvement of techniques of assessing the effects of hazardous substances on human health.
  3. The development of methods of assessing the risks hazardous substances pose to human health.
  4. The development of biological, chemical, and physical methods of decreasing hazardous substances and their toxicity.
The SRP encourages data sharing across different medical disciplines, to help better understand the link between exposures and health. To support grantees with data sharing the SRP has run webinars, and launched a data set library that contains a repository of research conducted by other grantees.
The SRP currently funds multi-project grants at sixteen institutions.
They currently fund more than twenty four separate university-based research centers using its annual budget. They also fund individual research projects, training education programs, and small business research projects.
The 2008 budget request amount for the SRP was $50.198 million.