Cara Henning, Ph.D.
Cara manages two key projects with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) on work mandated under the Toxic Substances Control Act: systematic review support for existing chemicals and support for lead renovation, repair, and painting regulations. Since 2017, Cara has assisted EPA in implementing systematic review for existing chemical assessments, with a focus on exposure science, toxicology, and epidemiology. She leads a team of 90 scientists to support more than 30 different chemical risk evaluations, providing project management and technical advisory services to individual task leads.
Since 2007, Cara also has supported OPPT’s work on lead regulations, including designing and implementing exposure assessments for dust generated in residences and public and commercial buildings during renovation activities. She was responsible for all aspects of the project, including model methods, model inputs, methods and results documentation and interpretation, and overall project management. She has also helped support additional analyses to determine what levels of lead in dust result in hazard to children and adults.
In addition, Cara has supported work for other federal offices, including support for arsenic, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxins hazard assessments for EPA’s Office of Research and Development. From 2016-2020, she served as our lead for support of the National Toxicology Program’s Office of Health Assessment and Translation, supporting our scientists and liaising with the National Toxicology Program lead on more than 10 different systematic reviews. She continues in an advisory role on these systematic reviews, helping find staff with the required expertise and find additional efficiencies to enhance our support.
Cara also has received training and served in senior-level technical support roles for other projects in the fields of exposure science, exposure model development, tool and database development, data management and analysis, and systematic review.
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Ph.D., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University
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Relationship between residential dust-lead loading and dust-lead concentration across multiple North American datasets. Building and Environment, 2020.
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Use of study-specific MOE-like estimates to prioritize health effects from chemical exposure for analysis in human health assessments. Environment International, 2020.
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Evaluation of a physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for inorganic arsenic exposure using data from two diverse human populations. Environmental health perspectives, 2018.
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Improving the risk assessment of lipophilic persistent environmental chemicals in breast milk. Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 2014.
