Research project results in a $35,000 scholarship for Sandy teen

Brighton High School senior Jessica Hart's curiosity about her sister's infertility led to a discovery that may answer questions for hundreds of Sandy women and put her through college.

The teen has earned $35,000 in the Young Epidemiology Scholars Competition - a national public health scholarship competition for high school students - for her research project entitled "Comparative Risk Assessment of Female Infertility and Pregnancy Problems from Exposure to Toxicants Discovered in a Residential Neighborhood Located in the Mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon."

"Basically, I became interested in this issue when my sister had a hard time getting pregnant," Jessica said. "I noticed all her friends that were the same age and grew up in the neighborhood were having problems not being able to get pregnant too. When I found out through a promotional email that there was a scholarship program that I could use the research like this for, I thought, 'why not?'"

Bell Canyon, the neighborhood Jessica lives in at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, is near a Superfund site - lead and silver smelters utilized in the 1870s left lead and arsenic in the soil. "I thought there might be a connection," she said.

Jessica went door-to-door collecting data from 150 of her female neighbors, as well as 150 residents living in a neighboring canyon. After spending several months on the project, her findings have backed up a hunch.

"Girls who are 20 to 30 years old, who grew up in the Little Cottonwood area, are 14 more times likely to have infertility than those who live somewhere else nearby," Jessica said. "It's pretty scary."

The state has cleaned up most of the contamination in the area. Jessica plans to repeat her study in 10 years to determine if the clean up and increased awareness in the area makes a difference.

"I hope that if I come back and there are still problems, more will be done to make sure they come back and try to fix things for once and for all," she said.

Jessica plans to attend school at the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in New York next fall, where she plans to study harp performance and epidemiology.