Speaker biographies

Trevor Butterworth is editor of STATS.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit project affiliated with George Mason University that examines the way statistics and science are used in public policy and the media. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com covering all aspects of our environment from style to technology and is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. He has also contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and other publications on a wide variety of cultural and scientific topics, and he has appeared on NBC Nightly News, NPR, and the BBC. Mr. Butterworth holds bachelor of arts and master of philosophy degrees from Trinity College Dublin, attended Georgetown University on a graduate scholarship, and received a master of science from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, where he also received the school's Sevellon Brown Award for outstanding knowledge of the history of American press.

Jon Entine is a visiting fellow at AEI. A former Emmy-winning producer for NBC News and ABC News, he researches and writes about corporate responsibility, science, and society. His books include Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), which focuses on the genetics of race; the best-selling Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk about It (Public Affairs, 2000), based on an award-winning NBC News documentary; and No Crime but Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-judicial Prosecution (TFG Books, 2009), about prosecutorial excesses. Mr. Entine is an adviser to the joint AEI-Federalist Society Global Governance Watch, a project that examines transparency and accountability issues at the United Nations, in nongovernmental organizations, and in related international organizations.

Lynn Goldman, M.D., a pediatrician and epidemiologist, is a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she focuses on environmental health policy, public health practice, and children's environmental health. She also serves as senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration science adviser. Starting in August 2010, she will serve as the dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. In 1993, Dr. Goldman was appointed by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate to serve as assistant administrator (AA) for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances (OPPTS). She served in that position for more than five years. As AA for OPPTS, she was responsible for the nation's pesticide, toxic substances, and pollution-prevention laws. Under her watch, the EPA expanded right-to-know under the Toxics Release Inventory and overhauled the nation's pesticides laws. Dr. Goldman made significant progress on the issues of testing of high-volume industrial chemicals and identification of chemicals that disrupt endocrine systems. At the EPA, she was successful in promoting children's health issues and furthering the international agenda for global chemical safety. Prior to joining the EPA, Dr. Goldman served in several positions at the California Department of Health Services, most recently as head of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control. She has conducted public health investigations on pesticides, childhood lead poisoning, and other environmental hazards. Dr. Goldman holds a bachelor of science degree in conservation of natural resources from the University of California, a master of public health degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, a master of science degree in health and medical sciences from the University of California–Berkeley and an M.D. from the University of California–San Francisco.

Julie Goodman, an epidemiologist and board-certified toxicologist, is an expert in human health risk assessment. She is the director of Gradient's epidemiology practice and is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she coteaches the class “Data Synthesis and Meta-Analysis.” Ms. Goodman's focus is on human health risks from chemicals in the environment and in consumer products. Her primary responsibilities include the design, oversight, analysis, and interpretation of epidemiology studies, as well as the evaluation of chemical toxicity data, apparent disease clusters, and chemical exposures. She has conducted two comprehensive critical weight-of-evidence reviews of studies bearing on the ability of very low exposures to bisphenol A to affect reproduction and development via endocrine disruption. She has also written several commentaries and a book chapter on this topic and has testified before several state legislative committees regarding potential bisphenol A restrictions. Before joining Gradient, Ms. Goodman was a cancer-prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where she conducted molecular epidemiology studies on colon cancer risk. She was instrumental in the development of Polymorphism Interaction Analysis, a powerful statistical tool for cancer risk assessment. Ms. Goodman holds a bachelor of science degree in environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master of science degree in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. in toxicology from Johns Hopkins University. 

Kenneth P. Green is a resident scholar at AEI, where he studies public policy with respect to air pollution and climate change, energy and the environment, transportation and the environment, and environmental chemicals. His work includes analyzing Canadian environmental policy. He contributes to AEI's Energy and Environment Outlook series, and his work has appeared in policy studies, newspaper and magazine articles, encyclopedia entries, and book chapters. He is the author of Global Warming: Understanding the Debate (Enslow Publishers, 2002), a textbook for middle school students. Mr. Green has worked on both U.S. and Canadian policy, first at California's Reason Foundation, then for nearly three years at British Columbia's Fraser Institute, prior to coming to AEI.

Wendy Heiger-Bernays is an associate professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health and has been active in the field of regulatory toxicology and risk assessment for nearly twenty years. Prior to joining the faculty at Boston University, she received her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Nebraska and did postdoctoral work in molecular toxicology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then provided project management at a private risk-assessment consulting firm conducting large, multipathway and multichemical human health risk assessments for Superfund sites, state hazardous waste sites, and other facilities with emphasis on the evaluation of exposure and chemical toxicity. During this time, she developed risk-based guidance for dioxin-contaminated sediments for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and for petroleum-contaminated homes for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. She has led training courses for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on risk assessment for the permitting of hazardous waste incinerators and for engineers on risk-assessment methods. Since leaving the laboratory, she has built productive relationships with representatives of governmental regulatory agencies, in part because of her ability to straddle the worlds of basic science and risk-assessment practice. Ms. Heiger-Bernays's current research focuses on estimation of risks and reliable interventions for mitigating the risks associated with metals and semivolatile compounds from crops and soils in community gardens and development of methods to measure risks associated with exposure to flame-retardant chemicals. Ms. Heiger-Bernays serves on EPA peer review and science advisory panels.

John Peterson Myers is founder, chief executive officer, and chief scientist of Environmental Health Sciences. For a dozen years beginning in 1990, Mr. Myers served as director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. Along with coauthors Theo Colborn and Dianne Dumanoski, Mr. Myers wrote Our Stolen Future (Penguin, 1996), a book that explores the scientific basis of concern for how contamination threatens fetal development. His website, www.OurStolenFuture.org, developed since that book was published, synthesizes hundreds of scientific articles about endocrine disruption to make them accessible to the media and the lay public. Mr. Myers is now actively involved in primary research on the impact of endocrine disruption on human health. He is on the boards of the John Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment; the Environmental Grantmakers Association; the Jenifer Altman Foundation; the Earth Day Network; and the Publication Education Center. Until its merger with Pew Charitable Trust in late 2007, he served as board chair of the National Environmental Trust. He has also served as board president of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, an association of more than forty foundations supporting work on biodiversity, climate, energy, and environmental health. Mr. Myers holds a bachelor of arts degree from Reed College and a Ph.D. in biological sciences from the University of California–Berkeley.

John Rost is the chair of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance (NAMPA) and has served in that capacity since 2007. NAMPA was established in 1993 and is a leading force in the promotion of light metal-packaging technologies. NAMPA's members are responsible for providing packaging that ensures safe and nutritious food for consumers all over the world. NAMPA also supports sound science and trusts the scientific review process that has protected the food supply for decades. Mr. Rost has been working on food-safety issues for metal packaging for the last thirteen years, specializing in coating-migration analysis and toxicological evaluations of packaging migration. In recognition of his continuous efforts to educate the government and public on the benefits of metal packaging in food safety, Mr. Rost was dubbed “The Fearless Crusader” by Packaging Strategies in November 2009.

Sarah Vogel is the program officer at the Johnson Family Foundation, advising the foundation's grant making to reduce public health impacts of toxic chemicals. Previously, she was the John C. Haas Fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Currently, she is completing a book on the history and political economy of the definition of chemical safety. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Public Health and Environmental History. Ms. Vogel holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, master's degrees in public health and environmental management from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Sociomedical Sciences.

Calvin Willhite is affiliated with NSF International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he develops human-health risk assessments for contaminants in drinking water and natural products. He has published primarily in developmental toxicology, quantitative structure-activity relationships, maternal nutrition, and pregnancy outcome. Mr. Willhite serves currently on the editorial boards for Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Toxicology, and the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Mr. Willhite has been a member of the National Academy's Committee on Toxicology, the Environmental Protection Agency's National Advisory Committee, the National Toxicology Program's Scientific Advisory Committee of Alternative Toxicological Methods, the International Life Sciences Institute's Structure-Activity Database Project, the National Research Council's Submarine Air Quality Subcommittee, NSF International's Health Advisory Board, the International Agency for Research on Cancer Chemoprevention Panel, and the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Lead in Construction Permissible Exposure Limit Committee. Mr. Willhite received a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Dartmouth Medical School and completed postdoctoral study at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.  

Trevor Butterworth Presentation

Lynn Goldman Presentation

Julie Goodman Presentation

Wendy Heiger-Bernays Presentation

John Rost Presentation

Calvin Willhite Presentation