Winifred Hamilton: Passionate about environmental health issues

By Ross Tomlin
Return to "Get on the (Environmental) Bus"

For Winnie Hamilton, Ph.D., studying environmental health isn't a day job. It's a calling.

Her role as director of Baylor College of Medicine's Environmental Health Section – where she conducts a host of research activities and symposiums – merely scratches the surfaces. She's also deeply involved on the community level, having served on the board of directors of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention and as a founding member of Mothers for Clean Air.

Why the multiplicity of commitments? Probably because of the multiple problems that won't go away by themselves. Take the disproportionately high lead levels in Galveston children, for instance.

"There are still lots of kids with high blood-lead levels, and we're all paying a major price, outside of the fact that it's morally and ethically inexcusable for us to continue poisoning children, knowing what we know now," said Hamilton.

What is now known is that children who live in Galveston have four to five times higher lead levels (largely as a result of contact with contaminated paint) than the national average, putting them at increased risk of neurological disorders and other long-term effects.

"It's way too high. It shouldn't be continuing to occur," said Hamilton. "We shouldn't be using our children to locate substandard housing."

Of course, lead is but one of the myriad regional environmental issues Hamilton and other community leaders must contend with.

One of a kind

"The Houston metropolitan area has a somewhat elevated level of pollutants, particularly ozone and several air toxics, from a variety of sources," said Hamilton. "From a research perspective, not only do we have stronger industrial components and very strong mobile components but we also have very unusual meteorology that is related in part to the gulf coast."

For the last several years, Hamilton has organized an educational bus tour for BCM medical students to various environmental hotspots around Houston – the ship channel here, a superfund (toxic waste) site there – to shed light on the largely overshadowed impacts of exposure to environmental hazards on their future patients.

Featuring guest speakers and regional experts, topics on the tour span the concentration of refineries, air quality control efforts, the prevalence of 1,3-butadiene (a carcinogenic by-product of synthetic rubber production), and susceptible neighborhoods with regular "shelter in place" emergencies.

Nonlinear path of progress

Hamilton admits to taking the "scenic route" to her present line of work.

After earning an undergraduate degree in printmaking and a master's degree in medical illustration at the University of Michigan, she joined BCM in 1974 as a medical illustrator. Approximately 10 years later she began doctoral work at neighboring Rice University and joined the BCM department of neurosurgery, where she worked not only as an illustrator specializing in neurosurgery and neuroanatomy but became increasingly involved in movement disorder research.

This shift led her to taking her summer "vacations" pursuing a master's in public health in the Harvard School of Public Health's summer program,. Her growing interest in environmental health issues within the Houston community, however, subsequently directed her into Harvard's regular program in environment health epidemiology, completing her master's degree in 2001.

"My background is a little eclectic," said Hamilton.

Upon returning to Houston, Hamilton became involved with BCM's Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Research Center, which had not previously conducted much in the way of environmental health research. Newly appointed as an assistant professor of medicine (with a joint appointment in neurosurgery), she launched the center's Environmental Health Section in 2002 with initial funding from the Houston Endowment.

Cause for collaboration

For reasons in addition to the region's environmental challenges, Hamilton hopes to see greater collaboration in the region.

"The Gulf Coast — and the Houston metropolitan area in particular — has been largely neglected in this arena. At the same time we have considerable heterogeneity, in levels and types of exposures as well as an extremely diverse population, that inherently make this region a particularly interesting and potentially fertile "laboratory" in which to study genomic-type issues relating to gene-environment interactions and differences in susceptibility among various groups," said Hamilton.

Along these lines, Hamilton heads a task force that is exploring the possibility of collaboration between BCM and Texas Children's Hospital to establish a pediatric environmental health center that would heighten awareness of the effects of exposure on one of our most susceptive populations as well as providing patient care. Hamilton also works with researchers from The University of Texas School of Public Health and the University of Houston to study multipollutant exposure using advanced atmospheric modeling, geospatial mapping and biostatistical methods.

"We have an unprecedented opportunity to make a difference in the lives of area residents…and to help make the TMC, in collaboration with area governments, one of the top environmental health research centers in the U.S. if not the world," said Hamilton.