STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBER
SRIC
Southwest Research and Information Center
Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) was founded in 1971 for the purpose of providing information to the public on the effects of energy development and resource exploitation on the people and their cultures, lands, water, and air of New Mexico and the Southwest.
Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) was founded in 1971 for the purpose of providing information to the public on the effects of energy development and resource exploitation on the people and their cultures, lands, water, and air of New Mexico and the Southwest.
SRIC is a multicultural organization working to promote the health of people and communities, protect natural resources, ensure citizen participation, and advance environmental and social justice for current and future generations.
Its work combines technical assistance, public information and education, policy and environmental analysis, networking, and skills development through ongoing programs addressing nuclear waste, uranium impacts, the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, and Thinking Zinc.
2026 News and updates
SRIC staff leads the METALS’s Community Engagement Core that links impacted communities with METALS’s environmental and public health research projects. Through the METALS CEC, SRIC continues to collaborate with community-based organizations on environmental health and abandoned mine clean-up efforts in the Churchrock, Nahata Dziil, Blue Gap-Tachee and Cameron chapter areas of the Navajo Nation. Water quality studies in each of these communities aim to identify local priorities for protecting drinking water.
- Educational workshops and webinars have addressed regenerative agriculture, tribal data sovereignty, uranium mining technologies such as in situ leach (ISL) mining, and a growing list of proposed uranium mining projects in northwestern New Mexico.
- Communities also remain actively engaged in reviewing cleanup activities at legacy uranium mines, commenting on radioactive materials transportation policies, and participating in tours and educational events that highlight the lasting environmental, cultural, and health impacts of uranium mining across the region.
SRIC is helping METALS build a collaborative relationship with SIPI’s Citizen Science Hub, which is prioritizing putting the tools of environmental assessment into the hands of impacted community members. SRIC staff has conducted radiation assessment trainings for SIPI students for the past two years.
SRIC maintains community liaisons in Laguna, Churchrock and Blue Gap, and through its collaboration with the UNM Community Environmental Health Department (CEHP), is the only nonprofit NGO in New Mexico and the Southwest engaged in the critical health studies needed to identify and mitigate exposures and document health outcomes.
Over the past three years, SRIC staff has presented a meta-analysis of findings of these studies to show health impacts across the studies. Activities and findings of the three major study are:
SRIC
KEY ISSUES
DiNEH Project Kidney Health Study (20 chapters, Eastern Navajo Agency):
UNM CEHP, SRIC and the Eastern Navajo Health Board organized Navajo-language surveys with more than 1,300 people between 2004 and 2010; 267 of those participants volunteered for blood and urine studies (“biomonitoring”).
DiNEH Project findings were:
- Proximity to mine waste sites significantly increases risks of cardiovascular disease, autoimmunity and chronic kidney diseases;
- Uranium in drinking water sources is associated with biomarkers of autoimmunity at concentrations a third of the federal drinking water standard;
- Chronic kidney disease is associated with biomarkers of kidney impairment and not with classic measures of diabetes;
- Arsenic and uranium are the leading contaminants in unregulated water sources..
SRIC
Navajo Birth Cohort Study ECHO+:
UNM, SRIC, the Navajo Dept. of Health and the Indian Health Service have collaborated on this study of pregnant women and uranium exposure. Through early 2026, nearly 1,700 pregnant women have been enrolled in three phases of the study.
Findings to date include:
- More than a quarter of enrolled adults have urine-U levels as high as the 95th percentile among all U.S. adults;
- Numerous babies are born with uranium in their urine, revealing that the placental barrier does not prevent mother-to-unborn baby transport of U and other metals;
- Navajo women are deficient in key nutrients – zinc, iodine, iron – that support health babies;
- Pre-term births are associated with increasing levels of urine in mothers’ urine.
SRIC
Thinking Zinc Clinical Trial:
UNM and SRIC teamed with three communities to test the theory that zinc in elemental amounts can help restore the body’s natural DNA repair mechanisms damaged through exposures to arsenic and uranium. Participants in all three communities showed decreases in blood and urine metals levels after taking Zn pills (11 mg) for up to 180 days.
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