About

The North Carolina Center for Coastal Algae, People, and Environment (NC C-CAPE) combines multidisciplinary expertise in ocean and climate science, toxicology, epidemiology, modeling, and community engagement to understand, predict, and reduce risks to human health from cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms in coastal waters. Growing threats to ecosystem and human health are expected with the increasing frequency, intensity, and range of cyanobacterial blooms, attributable to eutrophication and climate change.

For North Carolina’s coastal waters, including the largest lagoonal estuary in the U.S. the Pamlico-Albemarle Sound System, concerns about emergent harmful algal blooms have surged and coincide with reports on cyanobacterial toxin presence, mainly microcystins, in water and seafood. The transport of toxic algae and microcystins along the freshwater-to-marine continuum further increases the potential to spread microcystins risks across coastal environments.

Epidemiological studies measuring the association of microcystins exposure and liver toxicity, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, in rodent models are necessary to determine whether chronic microcystins exposure is associated with liver toxicity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and liver cancer in humans. Most research and environmental testing have focused on a single microcystins congener but since blooms are associated with mixtures of congeners that vary in toxicity, further data is needed to understand risks that emerge from microcystins mixtures and inform human health guidelines.

NC C-CAPE investigates the health effects of various microcystin mixtures, and elucidate links among environmental drivers and harmful algal blooms dynamics, microcystins congener composition, and toxin contamination in oysters and blue crabs.

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