|
|
|
Interview with CHE Partner, John Balbus, MD, MPH
 Director, Health Program, Environmental Defense
Steve Heilig: What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I became concerned about the environment and environmental health issues during medical school, but didn’t recognize there was a way to combine a medical career with environmental health until near the end of my residency in internal medicine. I decided to go on and train in occupational and environmental medicine, and have been seeking to use medical and public health science to further environmental goals ever since.
What is the primary goal/mission of your organization/project?
Environmental Defense is dedicated to protecting the environmental rights of all people, including future generations. Among these rights are clean air, clean water, healthy food and flourishing ecosystems. Protecting human health is one of four core priorities, the others being preserving biodiversity, restoring the oceans and curbing global warming. Within the health area, we are working to reduce emissions of harmful air pollutants from all diesel engines and power plants 80% by 2015. We are also working to assure the safe development and deployment of nanotechnology, especially in applications that provide direct environmental benefit or replace known toxics, and to increase publicly available toxicity information on chemicals in commerce.
What have been the most significant obstacles and successes you have encountered and achieved in this work to date?
Much of our community’s recent success in the air pollution arena has been in cleaning up diesel engines, with good rules set out for new on-road and off-road engines, the creation of a $1 billion federal authorization for diesel retrofits, and establishment of funds and other programs for diesel retrofits in New York, California and Texas.
It’s incredibly frustrating that some of what feels like success has really just been beating down attempts to roll back important environmental controls in this country, like the multiple defeats of the misnamed “Clear Skies” legislation and attempts to gut New Source Review. I’m deeply concerned by the misinterpretation and corruption of science in various settings that I’ve observed in the past four years. I think this willingness to stray from what public health scientists recommend, and the ability of lawmakers to get away with disregard for public health principles, are some of our greatest obstacles.
What is the number one change you would like to see for the future of environmental health?
Recognition among the general public (and their elected representatives) that what’s good for health and the environment is also good for national security and the economy.
What or who continues to inspire you in your work?
Since coming over to the advocacy world, I’ve been struck by how many people in a variety of settings hang on to high ideals and do their best to create positive change in the world, despite little financial or other rewards.
I’m inspired by a number of professional staff at the EPA and other government agencies, who despite budget cuts and a host of other morale-lowering activities, are sticking it out and doing their best to serve the public good.
I’m also greatly inspired by my colleagues at Environmental Defense and other public interest organizations, especially some in other countries. I see the change they are able to create through a combination of durable optimism, dogged persistence, and passionate commitment to their ideals and they become role models for me.
Do you have any comments/suggestions for CHE itself?
CHE has done an amazing job creating a forum where environmentalists and health professionals can come together and discuss important environmental health issues at a sophisticated technical level. The ability to attract academic public health and biomedical science professors and other professionals is great testimony to the scientific quality of the CHE efforts.
As CHE provides a larger and larger clearinghouse function for scientific information, it might take on providing that same function for important policy activities, such as public comment periods for major new environmental rules or other opportunities for scientific experts to weigh in on the policy front.
TOP
Posted: 9 May 2006
|
