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Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment (2009)

Chapter: Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
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Page 273
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
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Page 274
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
×
Page 275
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
×
Page 276
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
×
Page 277
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
×
Page 278
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
×
Page 279
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency." National Research Council. 2009. Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12209.
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Page 280

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Appendixes

Appendix a Biographic Information on the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the Environmental Protection Agency Thomas A. Burke (Chair) is associate dean for public health practice and professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.  He holds joint appointments in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and the School of Medicine Department of Oncology. Dr. Burke is also director of the Johns Hopkins Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute. His research interests include environmental epide- miology and surveillance, evaluation of population exposures to environmental pollutants, assessment and communication of environmental risks, and application of epidemiology and health risk assessment to public policy. Before joining the university, Dr. Burke was deputy commissioner of health for New Jersey and director of science and research for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. In New Jersey, he directed initiatives that influenced the development of national programs, such as Superfund, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Toxics Release Inventory. Dr. Burke is a member of the U.S. EPA Sci- ence Advisory Board. He was the inaugural chair of the Advisory Board to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Environmental Health and served two terms on the National Research Council Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He has served on several National Research Council committees; he was chair of the Committee on Human Biomonitoring for Environmental Toxicants and the Committee on Toxicants and Pathogens in Biosolids Applied to Land and a member of the Committee on the Toxicological Effects of Methyl Mercury. In 2003, he was designated a lifetime national associate of the National Academies. He received his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.  A. John Bailer is distinguished professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, an affiliate member of the Department of Zoology, an affiliate member of the Department of Sociology and Gerontology, and a research fellow in the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Oxford, OH. His research interests include the design and analysis of environmental and occupational health studies and quantitative risk estimation. Dr. Bailer is a fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA), a fellow of the Society for Risk 275

276 SCIENCE AND DECISIONS: ADVANCING RISK ASSESSMENT Analysis, and a recipient of the ASA Statistics and the Environment Distinguished Achieve- ment Medal. He serves on the National Research Council Committee on Spacecraft Exposure Guidelines and has served on other National Research Council committees, including the Committee to Review the OMB Risk Assessment Bulletin and the Committee on Toxicologic Assessment of Low-Level Exposures to Chemical Warfare Agents. He also has served as a member of the Report on Carcinogens Subcommittee and the Technical Reports Review Subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Toxicology Program. He received his PhD in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. John M. Balbus is the chief health scientist at Environmental Defense and adjunct professor of environmental health sciences at Johns Hopkins University. His expertise is in epidemiol- ogy, toxicology, and risk science. He spent 7 years at George Washington University, where he was the founding director of the Center for Risk Science and Public Health and served as acting chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health; he was also an associate professor of medicine at the university. Dr. Balbus has served as a member of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, as a core panel member of EPA’s Voluntary Children’s Chemical Exposure Program, and on EPA review committees for air-toxics research, computational toxicology, and climate-change research. He serves on the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. Dr. Balbus received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania and his BA from Harvard University. Joshua T. Cohen is a research associate professor at Tufts Medical Center in the Institute for Clinical Care Research and Health Policy Studies. Dr. Cohen’s research focuses on the application of decision analytic techniques to public-health risk-management problems with an emphasis on the characterization and analysis of uncertainty. He was the lead author on a study comparing the risks and benefits associated with changes in population fish- consumption patterns, an analysis of the risks and benefits associated with cellular-phone use during driving, and a study comparing the costs and health impacts of advanced diesel and compressed natural-gas urban-transit buses. He also has played a key role in a risk as- sessment of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow disease”) in the United States. Dr. Cohen served on the National Research Council Committee on EPA’s Exposure and Human Health Reassessment of TCDD and Related Compounds and was a member of the Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Science Advisory Committee that reviewed the agency’s evaluation of risks associated with lead. He earned his PhD in decision sciences from Harvard University. Adam M. Finkel is professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey School of Public Health and executive director of the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. From 2004 to 2007, he was also a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His research interests include quantitative risk assess- ment of health hazards in the workplace and general environment, regulatory design and policy, scientific-integrity issues, human susceptibility to carcinogenesis, and occupational and environmental regulation and enforcement. From 1995 to 2005, he was a senior execu- tive at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), serving as OSHA’s national director of regulatory programs and later as chief OSHA administrator in the six- state Rocky Mountain region, based in Denver, CO. He has developed methods to quantify and communicate uncertainties in risk and cost estimation and to explore the variation in

APPENDIX A 277 environmental and medical risks that people face because of differences in susceptibility, exposure, and other factors. Dr. Finkel received his ScD in environmental health sciences from the Harvard School of Public Health. Gary Ginsberg is a senior toxicologist in the Division of Environmental Epidemiology at the Connecticut Department of Public Health, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, and an adjunct faculty member at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Ginsberg is involved with the use of toxicology and risk-assessment principles to evaluate human exposures to chemicals in air, water, soil, food, and the work- place. He provides risk-assessment expertise to the department and other state agencies in standard-setting and site-remediation projects. Dr. Ginsberg is a member of the Federal Ad- visory Committee on Children’s Health Protection, which reports to the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. He served on the National Research Council Committee on Human Biomonitoring for Environmental Toxicants. He received his PhD in toxicology from the University of Connecticut. Bruce K. Hope is a senior environmental toxicologist in the Air Quality Division of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Dr. Hope’s expertise includes preparation and review of human, ecologic, and probabilistic risk assessments; exposure modeling; development of air-toxics benchmarks and risk-assessment strategies; and evaluation and communication of health and environmental risk associated with chemical releases. He has been an adjunct faculty member of the Oregon Health & Science University, where he taught courses in risk communication, toxicology, and risk assessment. Dr. Hope served on a number of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board committees. Recently, he served as a panelist in the Workshop on Ecological Risk Assessment—An Evaluation of the State-of-the-Practice and on EPA’s Regulatory Environmental Modeling Guidance Advisory Panel. He received his PhD in biology from the University of Southern California. Jonathan I. Levy is an associate professor of environmental health and risk assessment in the Department of Environmental Health and the Department of Health Policy and Man- agement at the Harvard School of Public Health and an affiliate of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. His research interests include quantitative risk assessment with a focus on air-pollution–related health risks in urban environments, development of quantitative measures of environmental equity suitable for risk assessment and benefit-cost analyses, and development and application of exposure models for multiple pollutants in urban low- income settings. Dr. Levy previously served on the National Research Council Committee on the Effects of Changes in New Source Review Programs for Stationary Sources of Air Pollutants. He received his ScD from the Harvard School of Public Health in environmental science and risk management. Thomas E. McKone is senior staff scientist and deputy department head at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an adjunct professor and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Dr. McKone’s research interests include the use of multimedia compartment models in health-risk assessments, chemical transport and transformation in the environment, and measuring and modeling the biophysics of contami- nant transport from the environment into the microenvironments with which humans have contact and across the human-environment exchange boundaries—skin, lungs, and gut. One of Dr. McKone’s most recognized achievements was his development of the CalTOX risk- assessment framework for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. He has

278 SCIENCE AND DECISIONS: ADVANCING RISK ASSESSMENT been a member of several National Research Council committees, including the Committees on Environmental Decision Making: Principles and Criteria for Models, EPA’s Exposure and Human Health Reassessment of TCDD and Related Compounds, Toxicants and Pathogens in Biosolids Applied to Land, and Toxicology. Dr. McKone was recently appointed by Cali- fornia Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Scientific Guidance Panel. He is a fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, former president of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, and a member the Organizing Committee for the International Life-Cycle Initiative, a joint effort of the UN Environment Program and the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. He earned his PhD in engineering from the University of Cali- fornia at Los Angeles. Gregory M. Paoli is a co-founder and principal risk scientist at Risk Sciences International based in Ottawa, Canada. He has experience in the development and application of risk analysis methods in diverse risk domains including microbiologic, toxic, and nutritional hazards, cli- mate-change adaptation, air quality, drinking water, engineering devices, risk-based sampling and inspection, and a number of comparative risk assessment applications. His consulting ac- tivities also include risk management and risk communication, primarily for public-sector cli- ents. Mr. Paoli previously served on the National Research Council Committee on the Review of the USDA E. coli 0157:H7 Farm-to-Table Process Risk Assessment. He serves on numer- ous expert panels including expert consultations convened by the World Health Organization (JEMRA), advisory panels of Canada’s National Roundtable on the Environment and the Econ- omy, Health Canada’s Expert Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance Risk Assess- ment and the Canadian Standards Association’s Technical Committee on Risk Management. Mr. Paoli is a member of the editorial board of Risk Analysis and served as a councilor of the Society for Risk Analysis. Mr. Paoli earned a master of applied science degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo. Charles Poole is associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. Previously, he was with the Boston University School of Public Health. Dr. Poole’s work focuses on the development and use of epidemio- logic methods and principles, including problem definition, study design, data collection, statistical analysis, and interpretation and application of research results. His research ex- perience includes studies in environmental and occupational epidemiology. Dr. Poole was an epidemiologist in the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances for 5 years and worked for a decade as an epidemiologic consultant. Dr. Poole was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on Gulf War and Health: Review of the Literature on Pesticides and Solvents and the National Research Council Committees on Estimating the Health-Risk-Reduction Benefits of Proposed Air Pollution Regulations, on Fluoride in Drinking Water, and on the Review the OMB Risk Assessment Bulletin. He received his ScD in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Joseph V. Rodricks is a founding principal of ENVIRON International Corporation. Dr. Rodricks has expertise in toxicology and risk analysis and in their uses in regulation. He was formerly deputy associate commissioner for health affairs and toxicologist for the Food and Drug Administration, and he is now a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Rodricks’s experience includes chemical products and contaminants in foods, food ingredients, air and water pollution, hazardous wastes, the workplace, consumer products, and medical devices and pharmaceutical products. He has

APPENDIX A 279 consulted for manufacturers, government agencies, and the World Health Organization. He has more than 150 publications on toxicology and risk analysis, and he has lectured nation- ally and internationally on these topics. He has been a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology since 1982. Dr. Rodricks has served on numerous National Research Council and Institute of Medicine committees and currently serves on the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He earned his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Maryland. Bailus Walker, Jr., (IOM) is professor of environmental and occupational medicine at Howard University College of Medicine. His research interests include lead toxicity, envi- ronmental carcinogenesis, and the social and economic dimensions of environmental-risk management strategies. He was the commissioner of public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and, earlier, state director of public health for Michigan. In other regula- tory and service work, Dr. Walker was director of the Health Standards Division of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In academe, his assignments have included being a professor of environmental health and toxicology at the University at Albany, State University of New York at Albany, and dean of the Faculty of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City. Dr. Walker has also served as chairman of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry and is senior science adviser on environmental health to the National Library of Medicine. He is a past president of the American Public Health Association and a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society of Health (London, England) and the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Walker is a member of the Institute of Medicine and served for two terms on the Board of Environmental Studies and Toxicology (BEST) of the National Research Council. In addition, he served on a number of other National Research Council committees, including being chair of the Committee on Toxicology and a member of the Committee on Estimating Mortality Risk Reduction Benefits from Decreasing Tropospheric Ozone Exposure. Dr. Walker received his PhD in occupational and environmental medicine from the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Terry F. Yosie is president and CEO of the World Environment Center, a nonprofit, non- advocacy organization whose mission is to advance sustainable development through the private sector in partnership with government, nongovernment organization, academic, and other stakeholders. From 2001 through 2005, Dr. Yosie served as the American Chemistry Council’s vice president for the Responsible Care initiative, a performance program that includes environmental, health, and safety management; product stewardship; security; and other aspects of the business value chain. He has about 25 years of professional experience in managing and analyzing the use of scientific information in the setting of environmental standards. He was the first executive director of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Commit- tee, which is responsible for reviewing the scientific basis of national ambient air quality standards. He served as director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board from 1981 to 1988 and instituted policies and procedures for enhancing the use of scientific information in regulatory decision-making. Dr. Yosie was vice president for health and environment at the American Petroleum Institute and executive vice president of Ruder Finn consultancy, where he was responsible for the firm’s environmental-management practice. He has served on a number of National Research Council committees and boards, including the Committee to Review the Structure and Performance of the Health Effects Institute, the Committee on Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter, and the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. He is the author of about 60 publications

280 SCIENCE AND DECISIONS: ADVANCING RISK ASSESSMENT on the use of scientific information in the development of public health and environmental policies. He earned his doctorate from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in 1981. Lauren Zeise is chief of the reproductive and cancer hazard assessment branch of the Califor- nia Environmental Protection Agency. Her current work focuses on cancer and reproductive hazard risk assessments, assessment methods, cumulative impact analysis, and the California Environmental Chemical Biomonitoring Program. She has served on advisory boards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, the Office of Technology Assessment, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She has also served on several Institute of Medicine and National Research Council committees, including the Committees on Risk Characterization, on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents, on Comparative Toxicology of Naturally Occurring Carcinogens, on Copper in Drinking Water, and on Review of EPA’s Research Grants Program. Dr. Zeise is a member of the National Research Council Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. She received her PhD from Harvard University.

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Risk assessment has become a dominant public policy tool for making choices, based on limited resources, to protect public health and the environment. It has been instrumental to the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as other federal agencies in evaluating public health concerns, informing regulatory and technological decisions, prioritizing research needs and funding, and in developing approaches for cost-benefit analysis.

However, risk assessment is at a crossroads. Despite advances in the field, risk assessment faces a number of significant challenges including lengthy delays in making complex decisions; lack of data leading to significant uncertainty in risk assessments; and many chemicals in the marketplace that have not been evaluated and emerging agents requiring assessment.

Science and Decisions makes practical scientific and technical recommendations to address these challenges. This book is a complement to the widely used 1983 National Academies book, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government (also known as the Red Book). The earlier book established a framework for the concepts and conduct of risk assessment that has been adopted by numerous expert committees, regulatory agencies, and public health institutions. The new book embeds these concepts within a broader framework for risk-based decision-making. Together, these are essential references for those working in the regulatory and public health fields.

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