| Log in - Help - May 9, 2008 | |
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WHAT'S NEW
Recently Released: Proceedings from the 2007 UCSF-CHE Fertility Summit (published in the journal of Fertility and Sterility) 5/9/08: CHE featured in AARP: "The Body Toxic" 5/9/08: CHE Partner Dr. Philip Landrigan interview in Discover: "How Much Do Chemicals Affect Our Health?"
4/15/08: Now available: State of the Evidence 2008: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment 2/20/08: CHE LDDI scientific consensus statement on environmental factors. 1/25/08: New environmental health-themed issue of San Francisco Medicine, journal of the San Francisco Medical Society, is now available online. 3/1/08: Two new chemicals policy reports from the University of Massachusetts Lowell's Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. 9/1/07: The BioInitiative Report: A Rationale for a Biologically-based Public Exposure Standard for Electromagnetic Fields
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CHE Partner InterviewsTell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
In 1994 I was hired on at the International Indian Treaty Council where I was exposed to both environmental work as well as international work as it applies to indigenous peoples and from there my interests grew and helped me on my path to the Indigenous Environmental Network and Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT) where I work now as the Environmental Justice Program Director. What first brought you into environmental health work?
I was pursuing a doctorate in chemical physics at the time the environmental movement was just getting going. It prompted me to stop working on my dissertation (too theoretical for the problems at hand). My first job was at the Scientists' Institute for Public Information (SIPI), which sought to make technical data on an array of environmental issues accessible to a wider audience. I eventually returned to graduate school, this time to study risk analysis and decision-making at MIT. I got a PhD in environmental policy and joined the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). It was there, while working on the regulation of toxic chemicals and genetic engineering, that I caught the electromagnetic field (EMF) "bug". The subject matter involved a mix of science, technology, politics and public health. It was as if all my training prepared me to take on this challenge. I soon decided to work on EMFs full time. In 1980, I left NRDC and started Microwave News. What first brought you into environmental health work?
I began my career studying mental health policy and the mental patients’ rights movement. During a two-year research leave in 1984-1986 at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, I was involved with the Program in Psychiatry and the Law. In our weekly meeting, psychiatrist Edwin Mikkelsen reported on his interviews for the lawsuit by Woburn families who were suing W.R. Grace Chemicals and Beatrice Foods for contaminating municipal water wells, leading to a large number of leukemia cases, mostly in children. The story went beyond medical interviews and exams, extending to a series of public health investigations prodded by local residents who had discovered this disease cluster. Tell us your own background - how did you come to your work?
I started my working life as a pharmacist, and it was the destruction of the ozone layer that finally threw me into hardcore environmental activism. I was at a loss to understand how other pharmacists seemed completely unperturbed to go on selling hair sprays containing CFCs. If health care was what we were supposed to be about, why did every pharmacy shop in the UK have about 6 square meters of shelf space devoted to selling products which would ultimately cause skin cancer? To cut a long story short, I ended up as senior research officer at Friends of the Earth in London, and some years later, helped prepare the FoE packs for delegates negotiating the Montreal Protocol. Tell us your own background - how did you come to your work?
In the eighties I believed that we needed more science and technology to improve human health. I worked for many years in the healthcare sector including Biogen and later Roche where I was responsible for their alfa interferon used in both oncology and virology. I became increasingly interested in the causes of cancer rather than therapeutics. The more I read the more I realized that environmental causes of cancer was a neglected area. Tell us your own background - how did you come to your work?
I grew up in New England in the 1970’s with a backdrop of the Seabrook nuclear power plant’s construction. Right in our backyard, the Clamshell Alliance was galvanizing the anti-nuke movement in the U.S. While my family isn’t generally politically active, I knew that my mother was cheering for the thousands of people protesting the construction. By age six or seven the seed was planted that I had the right to oppose things that I felt were wrong. At some level, I probably even felt like I had a responsibility to do so. So a life of being politically engaged is really the only one I have ever considered. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
In 1979, between my sophomore and junior years in college, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. I was already a biology major, so I read a lot about my disease in the medical and epidemiological literature. It didn't take me too long to learn that bladder cancer is considered a quintessential environmental cancer. We have more evidence about the environmental contributions to this disease than almost any other form of cancer -- with data going back more than one hundred years. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I grew up in the Newark, New Jersey area. My grandmother Devine told me stories of her friends who died of cancer after their jaws disintegrated from painting radium on watch dials in nearby East Orange. My mother pointed out neighbors who came home covered in dye from working in local chemical plants. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I heard Dr. Helen Caldicott speak during the first quarter of my freshman year in college. At that time, she was talking about nuclear disarmament and the threat that nuclear weapons posed to the human and natural world. Her speech touched something within me, and I knew that I had to be part of efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. What first brought you into environmental health work?
As a toxicologist my initial research interest was on the neurobehavioral effects of low level exposure to lead and mercury. This work was motivated by a desire to see that all children have an environment in which they can reach and maintain their full potential, free from contaminants such as lead and mercury. More recently my work has focused entirely on policy related issues, in an effort to create more effective policy with the currently available knowledge. Tell us your own background - how did you come to your work?
I have a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley. My professional career was devoted to developing and applying laser remote sensing systems for the remote measurement of atmospheric trace species, primarily aerosols and ozone. In the early 1990s, I undertook a project for the Sierra Club to determine the effect of acid rain and ozone on eastern hardwood forests. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
Andrea Martin, founder of the Breast Cancer Fund (BCF) recruited me to produce the San Francisco film screening premiere of Rachel's Daughters: Searching for the Causes of Breast Cancer in 1997 and then to orchestrate and produce a film about women with breast cancer and young women climbing Mt McKinley. "Climb Against the Odds: Mt McKinley" aired on public television stations and screened at film festivals around the country. It brought art and social change messages together. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I thought long and hard about this question. Was there a moment of awakening in my life when I made a deliberate decision to join the “environmental health movement”? I realized that the answer is no. This is who I am and this is how I have always lived my life. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I am a thalidomider. Since being a kid, I've worked on disability rights issues. When I became a biochemist I became aware of certain discourses around biotech, ethics and disabled people which lead to my involvement in bioethics and governance of science and technology issues - the latest being nanotechnology and synthetic biology. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
Learning about homeopathy after realizing that allopathic medicine could not help many conditions. Homeopathic philosophy immediately appealed to my sense of treating the individual and the cause, rather than giving a drug to masque symptoms. I became part of the resurrection of homeopathy, helping bring George Vithoulkas to the USA, becoming his assistant, and preparing some of his writings for publication. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I started down this path in 1974 as co-counsel in a law suit filed against Shell Oil because its refinery was polluting the surrounding Martinez, California neighborhood. In the mid-1980’s I worked as a volunteer for local groups concerned about environmental impact reports regarding the pollutants in San Francisco located developments. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
A chance meeting in San Francisco at the San Francisco Medical Society in March 2002 sponsored by Commonweal...where the nexus for what would become the Collaborative on Health and Environment [CHE] had its roots. I was then State President of the California Learning Disabilities Association and was invited since our national president at the time, Dr. Larry Silver, was a guest panelist. Tell us about your background and how you came to do the work you do.
I have a master’s degree in chemistry and microbiology. I worked for a research institute for 14 years after completing my master’s degree. Over and over again as the research institute performed investigations and evaluations of environmental stressors causing human health impacts, there was a lack of ability to provide the developed information directly to the impacted communities. The community members were not the clients for the studies and investigations. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
A deep spiritual connection to nature; a serious concern about the directions and methods of medicine and its handmaiden biomedical ethics; a frightening sense that our species is rapidly destroying its own nest and that of other life forms and that the health consequences will be enormous. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
I have a long-standing interest in environmental contaminant impacts on reproductive health that began with my patients with infertility and our lab studies on steroid hormone actions in endometrium and endometriosis. My key research interests include endometriosis, implantation and ovulatory disorders and infertility. What first brought you into the environmental health movement?
As an undergraduate at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in the early 1970s, I learned that benzene was especially toxic. One undergraduate summer, I worked for a refrigerator manufacturer. I found the entire production process fascinating and got to know fellow workers in many areas of the plant. One day at lunch, I learned that some workers were experiencing habitual headaches and nosebleeds. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
My goal in college was to collect enough science degrees to start an environmental sciences consulting firm. Growing up in a rural area of Southern California in the 1960’s, I watched with dismay the haphazard and inefficient urbanization of a lovely agricultural valley where I could ride my horse to elementary school, tie her up in a neighbor’s pasture, hop the fence and go to school. What first brought you into the environmental health movement? What first brought you into environmental health work?
During the mid-1970s energy crisis when our western valley was selected as a sacrifice area because it holds one of the largest lodes of low sulfur high BTU coal. Our already marginal water resources (quality and quantity) were at extreme risk. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I am an African American public health physician specializing in preventive medicine. I spent 6 years as deputy director of the health department of Kansas City, MO, and then served as the director at the Hartford Health Department in Connecticut. Initially drawn to the public health field because of the discriminatory practices I experienced as a youth, I chose preventive medicine as my specialty because it was supposed to bring social justice to medicine. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I acquired my environmental ethic at summer camp in northern Wisconsin, where I spent twelve summers as a camper and counselor. I have a BS in Natural Resources from the University of California at Berkeley, an MS in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan and an MPP in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. Tell us a bit about your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I got my first job in public health in New York City and worked in public health there and in Massachusetts for twenty years. During the period 1980-1989, I was the Director of the Massachusetts Cancer Registry where I became interested in the patterns and causes of cancer. I received two degrees in public health and became a professor at Boston University where I have taught for the last fourteen years. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I am trained as a bench scientist, but had an interest in exercise so I worked at ways to blend the two. I stuck to animals and effects of ozone on the lungs for my dissertation. I then studied exercising humans and ozone for my post-doctorate. I went to Louisiana State University in New Orleans and started working with tobacco exposure and primates and brought that to Eastern Tennessee. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do.
I started my work life as a Registered Medical Technologist. This is a disappearing field, which is the laboratory version of being a registered nurse, except with more rigorous science training and an emphasis on diagnosis rather than treatment. I specialized in microbiology and worked in the labs of major hospitals for a number of years, doing diagnostic testing and teaching college seniors. Tell us your own background and how you came to do the work you do:
When I was a teenager, my family lived in Richland, Washington, the town closest to the Hanford nuclear facility where the fuel was enriched for the first atom bomb. It made me think about who’s in charge of technology and who decides what’s safe. |