Measuring the Impact of Civic Engagement: Tracking Outcomes in Health, Education, and Economic Security

Describes the process of developing the Civic Engagement Measurement System to measure the impact of integrating civic engagement practices into human services programs in the areas of education, healthy living, and economic security. Includes the CEMS

Toxics source reduction and sewage upgrades eliminated winter flounder liver neoplasia (1984-2017) from Boston Harbor, MA, USA

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Diseases of Aquatic Organisms 131 (2018) 239-243, doi:10.3354/dao03299.Chemical carcinogen biomarkers can validate public investment in environmental remediation. A major factor driving the clean-up of Boston Harbor, MA, USA, induced by the federal Clean Water Act legislation of 1972, was the high prevalence of petroleum and halogenated aromatic hydrocarbon contaminant-associated liver neoplasia in winter flounder Pseudopleuronectes americanus in the harbor in the 1980s. In the present study, we examined the spatial and temporal relationships between the suspended solids and contaminants in the municipal sewage discharge, and liver neoplasia and histopathology in flounder, from 1987 to 2017. Toxics source reduction, sewage treatment, and sludge removal in the 1990s and outfall relocation offshore in 2000 enabled a decreasing prevalence of persistent toxic chemicals in flounder, effluent, and sediment, and consequent disappearance of liver neoplasia and reduction of neoplasm-associated, hydropically vacuolated biliary epithelial cells to background levels. This supports long-term investment in elimination and treatment of anthropogenic waste streams and the value of federal regulatory mandates to maintain and improve regional environmental quality.This work was supported by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and US Public Health Service (USPHS) grant CA/ES44306