The 30th National Pesticide Forum
Healthy Communities:
Green solutions for safe environments
Yale University, School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
New Haven, CT - March 30-31, 2012
Speaker List
Allison Aiello, PhD (tentative) is an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Aiello is an internationally recognized expert on infectious disease with a focus on socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities, the relationship between infection and chronic diseases, and infection prevention in the community setting. She has published studies showing that consumer soaps containing triclosan are no more effective than plain soap and water, and that use of triclosan is linked to an increase in allergies. Allison received her PhD in epidemiology from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Nancy Alderman is currently the President of Environment and Human Health, Inc. (EHHI), an organization dedicated to protecting human health from environmental harms through research, education and the promotion of sound public policy in Connecticut. Nancy is a past member of the Governor’s Pollution Prevention Task Force and the board of directors of Environmental Defense.EHHI is made up of doctors, public health professionals and policy experts committed to the reduction of environmental health risks to individuals. Its work focuses on pesticides, childhood obesity, cancer, asthma, school environments, wood smoke, synthetic turf, plastics, and more.
Julia Brody, PhD, executive director of Silent Spring Institute, is a leader in research on breast cancer and the environment and in community-based research and public engagement in science. Dr. Brody’s current research focuses on connecting breast cancer advocacy and environmental justice in a study of household exposures to endocrine disruptors and air pollutants. Since 1996, she has been the principal investigator of the Cape Cod Breast Cancer and Environment Study, a case-control study of 2,100 women that includes testing for 89 endocrine disruptors in homes and historical exposure mapping. Dr. Brody is an adjunct assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine.
Nelson Carrasquillo, general coordinator CATA (Farmworkers Support Committee) comes from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, where he worked as coordinator of Organizing in the National Ecumenical Movement (PRISA), working with fishermen’s communities, communities with environmental problems, farmworkers and small agricultural communities. He has been working with CATA since 1992, working with migrant workers located in Mexico, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico. His work with CATA is to enable and empower migrant workers as they struggle for healthier living and working conditions, adequate housing, environmental justice and dignity and respect.
Caroline
Cox is research director at the Center
for Environmental Health in Oakland, CA. Previously she served as staff
scientist at the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides. Prior to working at NCAP, she had nearly ten years experience
as a senior research assistant at Oregon State University where she conducted
research on the biological control of agricultural weeds. Caroline
serves as a public interest representative to the U.S. EPA's Pesticide
Program Dialogue Committee. She also serves on the Board of Directors
of Beyond Pesticides. She writes and speaks regularly as a national expert
on the toxicity of and alternatives to pesticides.
Robert Deschak is a Core Member of the New York City Beekeepers Association, a group of beekeepers, bee enthusiasts, and honey lovers who live, work and pollinate in New York City. NYCBA was central to overturning the policy that had banned beekeeping in the city. Mr. Deschak is a Core Member of the group and helps run the monthly meetings, organizes special events, and has his own hives atop a convent in the Bronx. He has helped move live hives off of rooftops, captured urban swarms, and proven himself in the urban beekeeping realm. Robert is a Columbia graduate who is also a former Marine officer, and as of late has been working for the Department of Education.
Jay
Feldman,
executive director of Beyond Pesticides, is
a co-founder of the organization and has served as its director since
1981. Jay dedicated himself to finding solutions to pesticide problems
after working with farmworkers and small farmers through an EPA grant
in 1978 to the organization Rural America (1977-1981).
Since that time, Jay has helped to build Beyond Pesticides' capacity to
assist local groups and impact national pesticide policy. He has tracked
specific chemical effects, regulatory actions, and pesticide law. In September 2009, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack appointed Jay to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).
David Hackenberg is the beekeeper who first discovered the disappearance of honeybees known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Mr. Hackenberg believes that pesticides contribute to CCD and that honeybees are a barometer of the environment. He is featured in
the film Vanishing
of the Bees and various media reports, including this 60 Minutes segment. Mr. Hackenberg founded Hackenberg Apiaries in 1962 as a high school vo-ag project. Today, he and his son operate approximately 3,000 hives of bees in 5 states for pollination and honey. David is a past president of the American Beekeeping Federation, and currently serves as co-chair of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board.
Gary Hirshberg is chairman and co-founder of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer, and the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. Previously, he directed the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Before that, Gary had served as executive director of The New Alchemy Institute, a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture and renewable energy. He has also authored books on wind power and organic gardening. Gary is a speaker on sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green and socially responsible business, organic agriculture and sustainable economic development.
Christian Krupke, PhD is a professor of entomology at Purdue University. His recent research examines the impacts of neonictinoid pesticides applied on corn to honey bees. The results demonstrate that bees are exposed to neonicotinoids and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period, including exposure through dust, soil corn pollen, and through dandelions growing in contaminated soil. Dr. Krupke is also the chairman of a group of university researchers that sent a letter to EPA stating that biotechnology companies are keeping university scientists from fully researching the effectiveness and environmental impact of genetically engineered crops.
Senator Ed Meyer was recently elected to his third term as a Connecticut State Senator. He is Assistant Majoity Leader and chairs the Environment Committee, which has cognizance of all matters relating to the Department of Environmental Protection and the state Department of Agriculture. Senator Meyer has introduced a bill in the legislature that would overturn the Connecticut's pesticide preemption law to allow local communities to enact pesticide restrictions that are more stringent than the state law. He also sponsored the bill, now law, that banned pesticides on school grounds, K-8. Senator Meyer received both his Bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Yale University.
Margaret Miner is the Executive Director of Rivers Alliance of CT, a statewide non-profit organization formed in 1992 to protect Connecticut's rivers and streams by promoting sound river-conservation policies and by assisting the many groups and individuals involved in watershed protection. She serves in several statewide capacities, including co-chair of the Water Planning Council Advisory Group. Prior to coming to Rivers Alliance, she was Executive Director of the award-winning Roxbury Land Trust, and before that she was a local newspaper reporter, specializing in politics, land use and the environment.
Chip
Osborne, founder and President of Osborne Organics (Marblehead, MA), has over 10 years experience in creating safe, sustainable and healthy athletic fields and landscapes, and 35 years experience as a professional horticulturist. As a wholesale and retail nurseryman he has first hand experience with the pesticides routinely used in landscape and horticultural industry. Personal experience led him to believe there must be a safer way to grow plants. His personal investigation, study of conventional and organic soil science practices, and hands-on experimentation led him to become one of the country's leading experts on growing sustainable, natural turf. Chip is a Beyond Pesticides board member.
Martha Page is the Executive Director of Hartford Food System (HFS), a nonprofit organization in Hartford devoted to issues of food security -defined as all persons being able to obtain a culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet in their community from normal sources such as grocery stores and farmers markets. Ms. Page has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Connecticut and brings that perspective to an organization that has a long history of policy advocacy and community organizing around healthy food access for all residents. Since 1978, HFS has been a leader in grassroots efforts to fight hunger and improve nutrition in Hartford's low-income neighborhoods.
Susan Phelan is director of a Cape-based grassroots non-profit GreenCAPE, a group founded 14 years ago by a group of neighbors concerned about the indiscriminate use of pesticides. The current focus of GreenCAPE activities is the promotion of organic land management and halting the spraying of 5 herbicides over the Cape’s only drinking water supply. Sue has been an organic gardener for 42 years and, after moving to Cape Cod, became a backyard beekeeper 24 years ago.
She is a NOFA/Mass member and a Board Member of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow and Clean Water Action/Mass.
Rodger Phillips is the Hartford Food System's (HFS) urban farmer. Grow Hartford, a project of HFS, harvests thousands of pounds of organic fruits and vegetables at three different sites in Hartford. This urban farm will operate for its eighth growing season in 2011. Most of this produce is donated to social service agencies in the city, but a portion is available for sale to low-income households through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership. HFS believes that long-term solutions to Hartford’s food problems can only be found by addressing the root causes of hunger and poor nutrition.
Warren
Porter, PhD is a professor of Zoology and Environmental
Toxicology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Dr. Porter's research has shown that
combinations of commonly used agricultural chemicals in concentrations
that mirror levels found in groundwater can significantly influence immune
and endocrine systems, as well as neurological health in animals. His recent research links pesticide exposure in utero to impaired learning, changes in brain function and altered thyroid levels. His lab has
also shown lawn chemical mixtures at low-levels increase abortion rates
in lab animals. Warren is a Beyond Pesticides board member.
Shannon Raider has been growing food in community gardens, on organic CSA farms, and at urban market gardens for over 10 years. Farming has taken her through the intersection of youth development, young farmer education and farmers market management. She is the former owner of Four Fields Farm in CT and is currently the Farm Manager & Director of Agricultural Programs at Common Ground High School. Common Ground is a center for environmental learning and leadership in New Haven, CT where a diverse community of children, young people, and adults cultivate habits of healthy living and sustainable environmental practice.
Routt Reigart, MD is Professor of Pediatrics at Medical University of South Carolina and has conducted university affiliated clinical trials since 1971. Routt is one of the nation’s top pediatric expert on pesticides. His research interests include children's environmental health issues, general pediatrics, and toxicology. Routt has been Chair of the EPA’s Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, a member of EPA/USDA/Tolerance Reassessment Advisory Committee and the FIFRA Science Advisory Panel, and CDC Chair for the Childhood Lead Poisoning Advisory Committee. He is also co-editor of EPA's Recognition and Management of Pesticide Poisonings. Routt is Beyond Pesticides board president.
Jerry Silbert, MD is executive director of the Watershed Partnership, Inc. A physician trained in pathology, laboratory medicine, and environmental health, Dr. Silbert has been the Watershed Partnership’s director and lead organizer since November 2000. The Watershed Partnership works in Connecticut to promote safe, healthy, livable communities for present and future generations through education, advocacy, and technical assistance. The Watershed Partnership envisions an environment with wholesome food, clean water, soil air, healthy forests, and functioning wetland, where both people and a diversity of wildlife can flourish.
Curt Spalding is head of EPA's New England Region (Region 1 Adminstrator) and has extensive experience in the environmental protection field as an advocate, policy analyst and administrator. For almost 20 years, he served asExecutive Director of Save the Bay in Rhode Island. He established the Narragansett BayKeeper and Habitat Restoration programs, which reconnected Save the Bay to ecologically important bay issues.
Since joining the EPA leadership team in February 2010, Mr. Spalding has been leading a holistic approach to finding environmental solutions in New England. He’s emphasized efforts in environmental justice and green economy.
Andrea Kidd Taylor, DrPH is an assistant professor at the Morgan State University School of Public Health and Policy in Baltimore, MD, and an adjunct faculty member at Howard University’s College of Medicine and the George Meany Center National Labor College. She served on the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses and the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Taylor's journal article, "Integrated Pest Management Policies in America's Schools," demonstrates the need for a federal school pest managment policy. Andrea is a Beyond Pesticides board member.
Paul Tukey is founder and spokesman for the Safe Lawns Foundation. He is the author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual and the companion DVD Making the Organic Lawn Care Transition. His 46 episode HGTV show – called People, Places & Plants – has just been released as a boxed set of DVDs. Mr. Tukey frequently speaks on the subject of natural lawn care, as well as gardening, photography and environmental awareness. Paul has been gardening since childhood, when he spent summers on a Maine dairy farm with his grandparents. He graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in journalism and worked as a sportswriter and editor before founding his own landscaping company.
John Wargo, PhD. Dr. Wargo is a professor of risk analysis, environmental policy, and political science at Yale University. He has lectured extensively on the limits and potential of environmental law, with a focus on human health.He has recently written Green Intelligence: Creating Environments that Protect Human Health. The book won the Independent Publishers Award of Gold Medal in the field of “environment, ecology, and nature” for 2010. He compares the history of five serious and global environmental threats to children’s health in the twentieth century: nuclear weapons testing, pesticides, hazardous sites, vehicle particulate emissions, and hormonally active ingredients in plastics.