Rianna Murray, PhD Candidate, UMD School of Public Health
Despite being one of the region’s most important urban waterways and valuable resources, the Anacostia River is severely polluted due to littering, stormwater runoff, sewer overflows and contamination by toxic chemicals. These problems have placed the Anacostia in the top 10 of the nation’s most contaminated rivers, and it has also been cited by the U.S. EPA as a ‘‘major area of concern’’ for the Chesapeake region. While remediation efforts are slowly being made to solve the Anacostia’s major pollution problems, one key element missing from these efforts is the assessment of the risk to human health due to this pollution.
Photo courtesy Skip Brown
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