Studies show PBDEs are rapidly accumulating in aquatic food webs and human environments across much of the northern hemisphere.
The question is: What dangers do they pose? Is the risk the same for people who inhale PBDEs primarily through dust as it is for species in the wild that ingest them chiefly through diet? Stapleton is working to find answers.
A soft-spoken, quietly competitive native of upstate New York whose interest in environmental chemistry was sparked by a childhood fascination with marine science, she's in the vanguard of international research efforts to learn more about PBDEs' toxicity and long-term fate in the environment.
Her research focuses on identifying the underlying factors that influence exposure and accumulation of PBDEs in aquatic organisms, and, increasingly, on human exposures as well.
“Do bromines pose risks for people? It's hard to say, because the toxicology is still being investigated,” Stapleton says, choosing her words with obvious care. “But close scrutiny is warranted, because from studies on fish and other model organisms, we know these are very persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals that can be converted into more toxic compounds as they move up the food web.”
Despite her youth—she received her doctoral degree from the University of Maryland in 2003—her words carry weight.
In papers published in 2004 and 2005 while she was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Stapleton became the first scientist to document that fish possess enzymes capable of metabolizing the most commonly used flame-retardant, known as deca-BDE, into compounds found in two of its more toxic and persistent cousins, penta- and octa-BDE.
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