Maria Argos

Maria Argos is an environmental epidemiologist whose research investigates the health effects of environmental metal exposures, with a focus on cardiometabolic and cancer outcomes across the life course. Her work integrates molecular epidemiology to identify pathways altered by environmental exposures that influence disease risk, leveraging high-dimensional molecular and biomarker data from large-scale epidemiologic studies.

She is the principal investigator of the Bangladesh Environmental Research in Children’s Health (BIRCH) cohort, which examines early-life health effects of metal exposures, and leads a study on environmental drivers of diabetes and kidney disease progression in collaboration with the Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium. Dr. Argos also contributes to major population-based studies, including the Health Effects of Arsenic Longitudinal Study (HEALS) and the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL).

Her research is deeply interdisciplinary, bridging environmental science and epidemiology to advance strategies for exposure mitigation and public health intervention. She has collaborated extensively with the Superfund Research Program and co-led a U.S. Geological Survey Powell Center Working Group to characterize environmental metal distributions and develop remediation strategies.

Publications:

Farzan SF, Niu Z, Guo F, Shahriar M, Kibriya MG, Jasmine F, Sarwar G, Jackson BP, Ahsan H, Argos M. Exposure to metal mixtures and telomere length in Bangladeshi children. Am J Epidemiol. 2025; 194(1):35-43.

Quaid M, Haque SE, Islam T, Shahriar MH, Sarwar G, Ahmed A, O’Connell S, Jasmine F, Kibriya MG, Ahsan H, Argos M. An Assessment of Multipollutant Exposures Using Silicone Wristbands Among Bangladeshi Youth. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2024; 21(12):1691.

Bulka CM, Scannell Bryan M, Lombard MA, Bartell SM, Jones DK, Bradley PM, Vieira VM, Silverman DT, Focazio M, Toccalino PL, Daniel J, Backer LC, Ayotte JD, Gribble MO, Argos M. Arsenic in private well water and birth outcomes in the United States. Environ Int. 2022; 163:107176.

Huhmann LB, Harvey CF, Navas-Acien A, Graziano J, Slavkovich V, Chen Y, Argos M, Ahsan H, van Geen A. A mass-balance model to assess arsenic exposure from multiple wells in Bangladesh. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol. 2022; 32(3):442-450.

Lombard MA, Bryan MS, Jones DK, Bulka C, Bradley PM, Backer LC, Focazio MJ, Silverman DT, Toccalino P, Argos M, Gribble MO, Ayotte JD. Machine Learning Models of Arsenic in Private Wells Throughout the Conterminous United States As a Tool for Exposure Assessment in Human Health Studies. Environ Sci Technol. 2021; 55(8):5012-5023.