National Pesticide Forum: Videos
Cutting Edge Pesticide Science
Warren
Porter, Freya Kamel, Chensheng Lu and Tom Arcury
Bridge to an Organic Future, the 27th National Pesticide Forum,
April 2009, Carrboro, NC
Part 1: Freya Kamel, Ph.D. is a staff scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Kamel's focus is on environmental determinants of neurologic dysfunction and disease, in particular, neurodegenerative disease. Dr. Kamel's research team which linked pesticide exposure in North Carolina and Iowa pesticide applicators to an increased risk of diabetes, showing that all seven pesticides examined contributed to a 20-200 percent increase in risk. Dr. Kamel has also studied the links between pesticides and Parkinson's disease and retinal degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. See her NIEHS studies.
Part 2: Chensheng (Alex) Lu, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health. Dr. Lu's interests focus on the assessment of pesticide exposure resulting from indoor applications, agricultural spray drift, parental occupation, or from dietary intake. His research projects have included using saliva samples as an alternative for biological monitoring, using GPS to assess children's time-and-location in relation to their pesticide exposure, and assessing urban/suburban children's long-term exposure to pesticides. He co-authored, "Organic Diets Significantly Lower Children’s Dietary Exposure to Organophosphorus Pesticides."
Part 3: Thomas Arcury, Ph.D. is professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the director of the Center for Worker Health at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr. Arcury is a medical anthropologist and public health scientist with a research program focused on improving the health of rural and minority populations. Since 1996, he has collaborated in a program of community-based participatory research with immigrant farmworkers and poultry processing workers and their families focused on occupational and environmental health and justice. He has also used research results to affect policy change.
Part 4: Q&A Discussion