We are surrounded by chemicals in our built environment. Our walls, floors, and furniture are made up of chemicals: some are benign and others are harmful to our health. But how do we know which are which? And how do these chemicals get into our bodies? In this series, you’ll learn about some of the major chemicals of concern, where to find them, and what happens when they enter our bodies. We’ll hear from a pediatrician, a toxicologist, a green chemist and an architect about the basics of buildings and chemicals.
Contributors
Dr. Maida Galvez
Professor, Departments of Environmental Medicine and Public Health & Pediatrics
Full Bio
Maida P. Galvez, MD, MPH, FAAP is a pediatrician and Professor in the Departments of Environmental Medicine & Public Health and Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where she is Founding Director of the New York State Children’s Environmental Health Center —the first state-wide, publicly funded model for children’s environmental health clinical services in the United States. She also serves as Director of the Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, a US Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control serving New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Dr. Galvez works to translate emerging research into programs and policies that prevent and reduce environmental exposures for children, their families, and their communities.
Laura Vandenberg
Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director, University of Massachusetts School of Public Health and Health Sciences Department of Environmental Science
Full Bio
Laura Vandenberg is an Assistant Professor and the Graduate Program Director for the Environmental Health Sciences Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst's School of Public Health and Health Sciences. Her research explores how early life exposures to chemicals can predispose individuals to diseases that manifest later in life, and on how current risk assessment practices can be improved in the study and regulation of endocrine disruptors. She was a Center for Research on Family’s Research Scholar in 2015-16, and has published many articles on endocrinology and toxicology in peer-reviewed science journals. Her work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. She holds a Bachelor’s in Biology from Cornell University and a PhD in Molecular and Developmental Biology from Tufts University School of Medicine.
Martha Lewis
Senior Architect & Head of Materials, Henning Larsen Architects A/S
Full Bio
Martha Lewis is a senior architect and Head of Materials at Henning Larsen Architects, where she established an office-wide material database with the firm’s sustainability department and implemented material strategies for projects with a focus on healthy, ethically viable, and environmentally tenable materials. With two decades of professional experience in Copenhagen and Berlin, Martha is currently involved in establishing a Danish/Nordic material declaration, and was a member of the Buildings as Material Banks shareholders network, which has worked to establish an EU material passport. In 2016, she participated in the advisory group for the Danish Environmental protection Agency’s“Undesirable Substances in Sustainable Buildings”, and she has been involved in the Danish Green Building Council’s adoption of the German building certification system since 2011. Martha holds a MArch from Washington University and a BA from Vassar College.
John Warner
President & Chief Technology Officer, The Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, LLC
Full Bio
John Warner John is a chemistry inventor who works to design and create commercial technologies inspired by nature consistent with the principles of green chemistry. With over 300 patents, he has invented solutions for dozens of multinational corporations. He is one of the cofounders of the field of green chemistry, co-authoring the defining text “Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice” and articulating the 12 principles of green chemistry with Paul Anastas. John has over 100 publications providing foundational work in the fields of noncovalent derivatization, polymer photochemistry, metal oxide semiconductors and synthetic organic chemistry. John has received prestigious awards as an academic (Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mentoring – President G. W. Bush & NSF, 2004) and the August Wilhelm von Hofmann Medal from the German Chemical Society, 2022), industrial chemist (Perkin Medal – Society of Chemical Industry, 2014), inventor (Lemelson Ambassadorship – Lemelson Foundation & AAAS) and for governmental chemicals policy (Reinventing Government National Performance Review – Vice President A. Gore & EPA, 1997). John received his BS in Chemistry from UMASS Boston, and his PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University. After working at the Polaroid Corporation for nearly a decade, he then served as tenured full professor at UMASS Boston and Lowell (Chemistry and Plastics Engineering).
Ken Geiser
Professor Emeritus of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Full Bio
Ken Geiser is Professor Emeritus of Work Environment at University of Massachusetts Lowell, and a founder and past director of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute and the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. His research and writing focus on cleaner production, pollution prevention, toxic chemicals management, international chemicals policy, safer technologies, and green chemistry. He is the author of Materials Matter: Towards a Sustainable Materials Policy and Chemicals without Harm, Policies for a Sustainable World. Ken was also one of the lead authors of the 2013 United Nations Global Chemicals Outlook.
Ken is a founding board member of National Toxics Campaign,Environmental Health Strategy Center, Healthy Building Network, International Campaign for Responsible Technologies, and Story of Stuff. He is currently the Chair of the Board of both Clean Production Action and Coming Clean, and has served as a Co-Chair of California’s Green Ribbon Science Panel and a Senior Fellow with the U.S. Green Building Council.