# Project SEAMIST (South East Area Maritime Industry Safety Training)

> **NIH NIH U45** · NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY · 2023 · $449,959

## Abstract

Program Summary/Abstract
The extensive water networks of the United States maritime industry carry over 65 percent of
the products transported in and around the country. Every United States region has supply lines
to navigable waterways and/or coastal or inland ports that are used to transport these goods. To
date, training for workers within and ancillary to the maritime industry that handle hazardous
materials as well as training related to worker safety, disaster preparedness and response have
been limited. Over nearly a decade, Project South East Area Maritime Industry Safety Training
(SEAMIST), a Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program (HWWTP) and Project Hazardous
Material Maritime Industry Response Training Initiative (HazMIRTSI), a Hazmat Preparedness
Disaster Training Program (HPDTP), funded by a cooperative agreement with the National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has addressed this unmet need.
Specifically, Project SEAMIST provides health and safety training for personnel whose jobs may
bring them into contact with hazardous materials in ports. To date, we have trained
approximately 7,000 participants, logging close to 70,000 contact hours and targeting several
occupational areas in the maritime industry within Florida, Louisiana, Virginia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, New York, and California. Building on this, Project
HazMIRTSI trained approximately 1,000 first responders to effectively handle disasters on our
waterways, especially involving hazardous waste, as well as the general population on how to
safely respond and provide clean-up after disasters. Project HazMIRTSI has extended our
presence from the Gulf and Atlantic states to the northern Atlantic states of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. Both projects
have been able to reach a nationwide audience and have used innovative training approaches
and state-of-the-art technologies, with flexibility to continuously adapt and evolve the curriculum
to fit the needs of trainees. Going forward, we aim to provide safety and hazardous
preparedness training to over 9,000 maritime workers in both English and Spanish, provide
disaster response training for 3,000 skilled response personnel, provide new disaster
preparedness training for 1,000 community members and continue to revise, optimize and
enhance our training curricula and evaluation protocols. Both projects aim to resolve the lack of
economical and specialized training courses available to the maritime industry. Our safety
training courses reduce and possibly eliminate incidences of injuries and deaths among
maritime workers, the community, and responders during and after disasters.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10633240
- **Project number:** 5U45ES019350-14
- **Recipient organization:** NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Darren Cohen
- **Activity code:** U45 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $449,959
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2010-08-17 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10633240

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10633240, Project SEAMIST (South East Area Maritime Industry Safety Training) (5U45ES019350-14). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10633240. Licensed CC0.

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