In high school, Dana Avram was interested in chemistry. She liked the reactions and equations, the opportunity to explain with pen and paper that which seemed to have no order in reality. In fact, there was much in the real world that must have seemed chaotic to Dana when she was in high school. Her homeland, Romania, like the rest of Eastern Europe was undergoing significant changes. Caged by the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu for decades, Romania was ridding itself of the dictator and of communism. Relief is still palpable as Dana recalls December 1989: “I will never forget those days--it was history in the making!” In fact, it would be the change in government that allowed Dana to enter the career she is in today.

Dana is a research specialist in Dr. H.V. Aposhian’s laboratory at the University of Arizona. The laboratory is studying one of the largest environmental health issues faced by the world today, arsenic poisoning. This is not the acute arsenic poisoning that the Borgias relied upon to kill off their victims, but chronic arsenic poisoning via our drinking water. Arsenic is found in drinking water all over the world, including here in the United States (for more information on arsenic in drinking water -http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/arsenic.html ). It gets into the water in a variety of ways; sometimes because of lumber, mining or pesticide use, but often because arsenic exists in the bedrock. It causes a variety of maladies including several types of cancer. Dana and her colleagues in Dr. Aposhian’s laboratory study how people metabolize arsenic and also if some people might be more susceptible to arsenic poisoning than others. In the laboratory, Dana and her colleagues are working on techniques to detect arsenic metabolites as well as ways to detoxify one particular type of arsenic, As III. The laboratory also works on how different genes are involved in the metabolism of arsenic.

Dana didn’t start off in high school—or even college--wanting to study environmental health. While the impacts of the Ceausescu regime were evident on the environment, study of the resulting health effects had been stifled by the dictatorship for decades. Environmental health studies just didn’t exist; it wasn’t an educational or career choice for her. “In the communism time nobody was interested in the environmental problems.” Dana explains, “What was important was industrial production, not the peoples’ health.” So Dana followed her love of chemistry and got a chemistry degree. By the time she left college, air, soil and water pollution were beginning to be studied, “After communism fell the big issues regarding pollution became more evident.”

One of the first private companies in Romania to study environmental pollution problems and resulting health issues was the Environmental and Health Center (EHC). Dana was the first employee at EHC. “I used my chemistry degree and worked as a chemist. After some training I was able to work as an environmental specialist.” The issues faced by Romania after years of neglect were many. “We participated in impact studies and environmental balances for chemical, wood, and food industry, assess their impact on human health and gave solutions to reduce the pollution.”

But how did she get from Romania to America? “I met Dr. Aposhian in 1999 when he came in Romania to do a study regarding the arsenic in drinking water. There is a region in Romania, Arad County, where the concentration of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water is high. EHC partnered with Dr. Aposhian to study this issue…As a result of that partnership I had the opportunity to come to the US to study a technique that uses Atomic Absorption Equipment.”

In recalling her first visit to Tucson, Dana points out the differences between the city she is from, Cluj, and Tucson. Cluj is the capital of Transylvania, a region of Romania. Set amid majestic mountains, with a more temperate climate than the Sonoran Desert, Cluj’s twisting narrow roads make Tucson’s wide streets look like interstates. The legendary Dracula’s castle lends a mystical feel to her home city. However fond Dana is of Cluj, she could not pass up the opportunity to experience life in the U.S. More significantly, she was eager to study an environmental health problem, one which affects not only her homeland but the entire world. When Dr. Aposhian gave Dana the opportunity to work in his laboratory she took it. “It is an opportunity to pursue [solutions to] the arsenic problem using new techniques, to expand my education with opportunities not available yet in Romania, and to get a flavor for different cultures.”

Dana did not know in high school where her interest in chemistry might take her, nor even that the field of environmental health was a career option, but as a result of revolutionary political changes in her homeland she is able to be part of a revolution in how arsenic poisoning is understood today, across the globe.