Cynthia Curl, assistant professor in the School of Allied Health Sciences Department of Community and Environmental Health, has received a great amount of attention in the news for her research and recent publication.
In the Feb. 5 edition of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), Curl published a study, “Estimating Pesticide Exposure from Dietary Intake and Organic Food Choices in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis,” which predicts a person’s pesticide exposure based on information about their usual diet. Since then, Curl has received more attention for her work.
According to EHP’s service, Altmetric, that measures the quality and quantity of online attention , there have been nearly 10,000 views of Curl’s article. Of all the 3.7 million articles that Altmetric has tracked, Curl is in the 98 percentile.
Curl has been interviewed by Time Magazine, the Huffington Post, Fast Company, Prevention Magazine, and Consumer Reports, among others. Curl also had the opportunity to interview at Boise State’s Public Radio station which can be heard on the Boise State Public Radio website.
In addition to the interviews, the Science Communication Network, a nonprofit that works with EHP, tracked the total number of articles that were published about Curl’s study, which totaled around 200 worldwide.
“It has been very exciting to see this article receive so much attention. To be honest, I’m not surprised that people are interested in the topic,” said Curl. “You can’t shop in a grocery store now without having to make a choice about whether or not to spend the extra money to buy organic products. However, there is still a great deal of controversy about what, exactly, we are gaining when we make the organic choice. I hope this research provides consumers with a little more information to help guide these decisions.”