The Foundation was established under a Trust Deed of 28 August 1978 by the O'Hea family with gifts of shares in Colt International and Associated Companies Limited. This gift is now represented by 22% of Ordinary £1 shares in Colt Investments Limited, which is the holding company for the Colt Group of Companies. The primary interest of the Colt Foundation is to promote and encourage research into social, medical and environmental problems created by commerece and industry. The Colt Group can be contacted through their website, www.coltgroup.com

The Purpose of The Foundation

The Foundation considers applications for funding high quality research projects in the field of occupational and environmental health, particularly those aimed at discovering the cause of illnesses arising from conditions at the place of work. The work is monitored by our Scientific Advisers and External Assessors to achieve the maximum impact with available funds. The Trustees prefer to be the sole source of finance for a project. Grants are not made to the general funds of other charities, or directly to individual research workers.

The Foundation also makes grants through selected universities and colleges to enable students to take higher degrees in subjects related to occupational and environmental health. PhD Fellowships are awarded each year, and the Foundation is committed to support the MSc course in Human & Applied Physiology at King's College, London.

Research in Occupational Health has evolved since the early post war years when most ill health arising in the workplace was in an environment of steel mills, coal mines and other heavy industries. Today, those industries have all but disappeared in the UK, and the percentage of the workforce employed in manufacturing has declined enormously since the 1950's. In the past, the main hazards were from toxic dusts, for example from coal, asbestos and quartz, and from toxic fumes, the problems of which are now largely understood.

Today there are new hazardous substances such as the recently discovered ultra fine particles (less than 100nm diameter) derived from diesel exhausts as much as from factory processes.

Nanoparticles

For many years, the Colt Foundation has been supporting research into the health effects of toxic particles and fibres.

In 1989 the Foundation agreed to support a five year programme at the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh designed to compare the toxicity of the man made mineral fibres, then coming into use, with asbestos whose toxicity was by then well understood.

By 1996, the Foundation was supporting work at Napier University led by Dr (now Professor) Ken Donaldson and Dr (now Professor) Vicki Stone, which studied the mechanism whereby toxic particles of dust penetrate lung cells and act on the nucleus of the cell so as to disrupt the function of the DNA. Both Professor Donaldson and Professor Stone continue to receive support from the Foundation.

In 1997 the Trustees agreed a grant towards the establishment of the ELEGI Colt Laboratory by Professor Ken Donaldson and Professor Bill MacNee. ELEGI (Edinburgh Lung and the Environment Group Initiative) brings together the expertise of the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, and the Institute of Occupational Medicine, working on lung disease. Work continues there on fine particles, ultrafine particles and now nanoparticles.

Professor Ken Donaldson was appointed a Colt Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh in 2002, and is leading the study of the potential of nanoparticles, both for good and ill.

A Colt Foundation former PhD student, Dr Rodger Duffin, had been working in Düsseldorf at the Institut für umweltmedizinische Forschung (IUF), and in January 2005 returned to the UK to join the team in the ELEGI Colt Laboratories at the University of Edinburgh with a new Foundation grant to study mechanisms of nanparticle and nanotube-induced pulmonary toxicity. The collaboration with Dr Roel Schins in Düsseldorf will continue through this project, together with collaboration with Professor Vicki Stone at Napier University, and Dr Lang Tran at the Institute of Occupational Medicine.

Left to right, the picture shows Professor Ken Donaldson, Professor Vicki Stone and Dr Rodger Duffin.