National Academies Press: OpenBook

Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan (2011)

Chapter: Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
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Appendix A

Committee Biographical Sketches

David J. Tollerud, M.D., M.P.H. (Chair), is a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the School of Public Health and Information Sciences at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. He has extensive clinical training, with specialty board certifications in internal medicine, pulmonary and critical care medicine, and occupational medicine. Dr. Tollerud has research expertise in environmental and occupational health, epidemiology, and immunology, and consulting experience in the areas of occupational and environmental respiratory disease, medical surveillance, and workplace injury prevention programs. He served as the chair of the Committee on the Disposition of the Air Force Health Study, and he has served on the IOM’s Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice and on a number of IOM committees since 1992.

John R. Balmes, M.D., is a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and chief of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. He is also a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Northern California Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. Dr. Balmes studies the respiratory health effects of various air pollutants. He has a particular interest in occupational respiratory disease. He has investigated the acute effects of inhalation exposures to ambient air pollutants in his human exposure laboratory at San Francisco General Hospital and the chronic effects of such exposures in epidemiological studies with collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Balmes also is investigating genetic determinants of responses to air pollutants. He has led research, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to assist in the development of a national program to link environmental hazards with health outcome data to improve the tracking of diseases potentially related to environmental exposures. He is also the physician member of the California Air Resources Board. He served on the NRC’s Committee for the Review of the Army’s Enhanced Particulate Matter Surveillance Project Report. Dr. Balmes received his M.D. from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Aruni Bhatnagar, Ph.D., is a Professor of Medicine and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. His research interests include cardiovascular toxicity of environmental aldehydes, including pollutants such as gasoline vapor, car exhaust, smoke, and smog, among others. Some of Dr. Bhatnagar’s research tests the relation between exposure to aldehydes and myocardial dysfunction, and exposure to aldehydes as a risk

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×

factor for developing heart disease. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Kanpur, India. He obtained his post-doctoral training at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.

Edmund A. C. Crouch, Ph.D., is a senior scientist with Cambridge Environmental Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has published widely in the areas of risk assessment, and presentation and analysis of uncertainties. He has co-authored a major text in risk assessment, Risk/Benefit Analysis. Dr. Crouch serves as an expert advisor to various local and national agencies concerned with public health and the environment, and has served on a number of National Academy of Sciences committees, including the Committee on Health Effects of Waste Incineration. Dr. Crouch received his Ph.D. in High Energy Physics from Cambridge University.

Francesca Dominici, Ph.D., is a professor of biostatistics in the Harvard School of Public Health at Harvard University. Dr. Dominici’s research has focused on the interface between the methodological development of hierarchical models and their applications to multi-level data. She has extensive experience on the development of statistical methods and their applications to clinical trials, toxicology, biology, and environmental epidemiology. Her main research interest is in the development of statistical models and the conduct of epidemiological studies to estimate the health effects of air pollution. She has served on a number of National Academies’ committees including the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Review of the Medical Literature Relative to Gulf War Veterans’ Health; the Committee to Assess Potential Health Effects from Exposures to PAVE PAWS Low-Level Phased-array Radiofrequency Energy; and the Committee on The Utility of Proximity-Based Herbicide Exposure Assessment in Epidemiologic Studies of Vietnam Veterans. Dr. Dominici received her Ph.D. in statistics at the University of Padua, Italy.

Ellen A. Eisen, Sc.D., is an adjunct professor of environmental health sciences and epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health. Her research focuses on methods for modeling exposure-response in occupational cohort studies. She has studied respiratory, cancer and cardiovascular outcomes in relation to a wide variety of occupational exposures, including silica, cotton dust, endotoxin, welding fumes, and metalworking fluids. Her early studies of longitudinal decline in pulmonary function identified high test variability of FEV1 as a biomarker of impaired lung function and the standard exclusion of nonreproducible tests as a source of selection bias. She has published many papers on cancer incidence and mortality in relation to oil-based metalworking fluids in autoworkers. Dr. Eisen has served on numerous NRC and IOM committees, including the Committee on Asbestos: Selected Health Effects and the Committee on the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite. Dr. Eisen earned her Sc.D. in biostatistics and occupational health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Mary A. Fox, Ph.D., M.P.H., is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research is focused on developing cumulative risk assessment to inform public-health decision making. Dr. Fox has applied cumulative-risk methods in numerous community health assessments. Her current research is directed at national-level decision-making and includes the relationship between exposure to a mixture of nephrotoxic metals and renal function and applications of risk assessment to policy evaluation. Dr. Fox earned her M.P.H. from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Mark W. Frampton, M.D., is a professor of medicine and environmental medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is also the medical director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Frampton is board certified in Internal Medicine and Pulmonary Diseases, and his research focuses on human clinical studies of the health effects of gaseous and particulate air pollution. He has served as a member on the external scientific advisory committees of the Southern California and Harvard Particulate Matter Centers, and as a consultant for the California Air Resources Board. Dr. Frampton received his M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×

Petros Koutrakis, Ph.D., is a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, Head of the Exposure, Epidemiology and Risk Program and the Director of the EPA/Harvard University Center for Ambient Particle Health Effects. His research activities focus on the development of human exposure measurement techniques and the investigation of sources, transport, and the fate of air pollutants. In collaboration with his colleagues in the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, he has developed ambient particle concentrators and high volume samplers that can be used to conduct human and animal inhalation studies. He has also developed a personal ozone monitor, a continuous fine particle measurement technique and several other sampling methods for a variety of gaseous and particulate air pollutants. These novel techniques have been used extensively by air pollution scientists and human exposure assessors in United States and worldwide. Dr. Koutrakis has conducted a number of comprehensive air pollution studies in the United States, Canada, Spain, Chile, Kuwait, Cyprus, and Greece that investigate the extent of human exposures to gaseous and particulate air pollutants. Other research interests include the assessment of particulate matter exposures and their effects on the cardiac and pulmonary health. Dr. Koutrakis is a member of national and international committees and the past Technical Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association. He has published more than 170 peer reviewed papers in the areas of air quality, exposure, and health effects assessment and instrumentation. Dr. Koutrakis received his Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Paris in 1984.

Jacob McDonald, Ph.D., is a scientist and director of the Chemistry and Inhalation Exposure Program at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. He conducts research that bridges his education and experience in analytical chemistry, aerosol science, and toxicology. Dr. McDonald has experience in the aerosolization and vaporization of gases and particles for a wide range of applications. He has an interest in developing laboratory exposures that represent “real world” conditions, and conducting characterizations of these exposures that allow toxicity results to be placed in the context of human exposures to entire environmental pollutants or drug products. His work spans the study of complex mixtures, respiratory drug delivery, animal model development, and metabolism in mammals. He is a member of the American Association for Aerosol Research, the Society of Toxicology, and the American Chemical Society. Dr. McDonald served on the NRC Committee to Review the Army’s Enhanced Particulate Matter Surveillance Project Report. He earned a Ph.D. in environmental chemistry and toxicology from the University of Nevada.

Gunter Oberdörster, D.V.M., Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester, director of the University of Rochester Ultrafine Particle Center, principal investigator on a multidisciplinary research initiative in nanotoxicology, and head of the Pulmonary Core of a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences center grant. His research focuses on the effects and underlying mechanisms of lung injury induced by inhaled nonfibrous and fibrous particles, including extrapolation modeling and risk assessment. His studies of ultrafine particles influenced the field of inhalation toxicology, raising awareness of the unique biokinetics and toxic potential of nanoscale particles. He has served on many national and international committees and is a recipient of several scientific awards. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Aerosol Medicine, Particle and Fibre Toxicology, Nanotoxicology, and the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health and is the associate editor of Inhalation Toxicology and Environmental Health Perspectives. Dr. Oberdörster has served on several NRC committees, including the Committee for Review of the Federal Strategy to Address Environmental, Health, and Safety Research Needs for Engineered Nanoscale Materials and the Committee on Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter. He earned his D.V.M. and Ph.D. (in pharmacology) from the University of Giessen, Germany.

Dorothy E. Patton, Ph.D., J.D., has more than 24 years experience with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1976–2000). She began her EPA career working as an attorney in EPA’s Office of General Council on air, pesticide, and toxic substance issues. She later moved on to positions as Director of the Office of Science Policy, Executive Director of the EPA Science Policy Council, and Executive Director of the EPA Risk Assessment Forum. In these roles she was responsible for developing and implementing risk assessment policies and practices, environmental research planning and prioritization, and long-range strategic planning. After retiring from EPA in 2000, Dr. Patton taught a course in risk assessment at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×

and worked as a consultant with the Risk Sciences Institute within the International Life Sciences Institute. Dr. Patton was formerly a member of the NRC Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. She has also been a member of several NRC committees, including Human Biomonitoring for Environmental Toxicants, Metrics for Global Change Research, EPA Assessment Factors for Data Quality, Review of NASA’s Earth Science Applications Program Strategic Plan, and the NRC Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the United States EPA. She is currently a member of the IOM Committee on Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. Dr. Patton received a Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law.

William M. Valentine, Ph.D., D.V.M., is associate professor of pathology and researcher at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His research specializes in the mechanisms of environmental neurotoxicants and neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Valentine’s current research includes delineating the molecular mechanisms of chemical agents that produce peripheral neuropathies. He is also investigating the role of copper dysregulation in neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Valentine has served on several NRC and IOM committees, including the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Literature Review of Selected Environmental Agents, Pollutants, and Synthetic Chemical Compounds, the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Review of the Literature on Pesticides and Solvents: Solvent Panel, and the Subcommittee on Jet Propulsion Fuel 8. Dr. Valentine earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, and his D.V.M. from the University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois.

Bailus Walker, Ph.D., M.P.H., is a professor of environmental and occupational medicine and toxicology at Howard University College of Medicine. His research interests include lead toxicity and environmental carcinogenesis. Dr. Walker has served as commissioner of public health for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; chairman of the Massachusetts Public Health Council; and state director of public health for Michigan. He is past president of the American Public Health Association, and a distinguished fellow of both the Royal Society of Health and the American College of Epidemiology. Dr. Walker is currently a senior science advisor for environmental health to the National Library of Medicine and he is a member of the IOM. He has also served on several NRC committees, most recently the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the U.S. EPA; the Committee on Mine Placement of Coal Combustion Wastes; the Committee on Toxicology; and the Committee for the Review of the Army’s Enhanced Particulate Matter Surveillance Program Report. Dr. Walker received a Ph.D. in occupational and environmental medicine from the University of Minnesota.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×
Page 129
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×
Page 130
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×
Page 131
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Committee Biographical Sketches." Institute of Medicine. 2011. Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13209.
×
Page 132
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Many veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have health problems they believe are related to their exposure to the smoke from the burning of waste in open-air "burn pits" on military bases. Particular controversy surrounds the burn pit used to dispose of solid waste at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, which burned up to 200 tons of waste per day in 2007. The Department of Veterans Affairs asked the IOM to form a committee to determine the long-term health effects from exposure to these burn pits. Insufficient evidence prevented the IOM committee from developing firm conclusions. This report, therefore, recommends that, along with more efficient data-gathering methods, a study be conducted that would evaluate the health status of service members from their time of deployment over many years to determine their incidence of chronic diseases.

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