Four Years After the President's Cancer Panel Report: Recommendations and Next Steps
11:00 am US Eastern Time
Slides & Resources
Speaker presentation slides:
Dr. Finkel: Tighter Controls on Environmental/Occupational Carcinogens in the Wake of the PCP Report? Not Without More Work - Download the PDF
Dr. Fenton: Environmental Effects on the Breast - Download the PDF
Dr. Clapp: Toward a Cancer-free Economy - Download the PDF
Additional resources of interest:
Boston Globe: Can Jamaica Plain businesses go carcinogen free? A plan to get Boston area shop owners to give up on dangerous chemicals is just the kind of bold thinking we need. - Read the article
The President's Cancer Panel Report released in May, 2010 marked an historic step forward in US recognition of the role of environmental contaminants in cancer causation. It also noted factors such as unnecessary radiation exposure, especially to children, from CT scans. The Report summarized the state of the evidence and made important recommendations for moving forward. It is now four years later, and the Report has been cited in numerous scientific articles, popular news stories, blogs, films and other media in the US. and around the world. This call addressed questions such as what important work has been done since the publication of the PCP? What are the critical next steps at the scientific and policy level? Which are the most important steps needed to protect public health?
Featured Speakers
Richard Clapp, DSc, MPH, is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health and Adjunct Professor at U. of Mass.- Lowell. Professor Clapp is an epidemiologist with over forty years of experience in public health practice, research, teaching and consulting. He has an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health and a DSc in Epidemiology from Boston University School of Public Health. He served as the founding Director of the Massachusetts Cancer Registry from 1980-1989. Professor Clapp was formerly the Co-Chair of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility and an Associate Editor of Environmental Health Perspectives. His research has included studies of cancer around nuclear facilities, in workers and military veterans, and in communities with toxic hazards.
Suzanne Fenton, PhD, is a Group Leader with the Reproductive Endocrinology Group at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Fenton received her BS, MS, and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the areas of endocrinology and reproductive physiology, specifically training in the area of mammary gland and lactation biology. She completed her post-doctoral work at the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in Chapel Hill, NC in the area of cancer biology. Fenton worked as a principal investigator at the US Environmental Protection Agency's Reproductive Toxicology Division from 1998 to 2009, mentoring numerous trainees. She was a co-recipient of the 2008 Level I US Scientific and Technological Achievement Award, an EPA top honor, as well as several other awards. With the Reproductive Endocrinology Group, Dr. Fenton focuses on the role of environmental chemicals in breast developmental timing as it relates to puberty, increased susceptibility to breast cancer, and altered lactational ability. The group provides expertise in the use of whole mount preparations in evaluating early life development of both male and female rat offspring and lifelong effects in female mice.
Adam Finkel, ScD, is a the Senior Fellow and Executive Director at the Penn Program on Regulation and is Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Rutgers School of Public Health. He is one of the nation’s leading experts in the evolving field of risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis, with 25 years of experience improving methods of analysis and making risk-based decisions to protect workers and the general public from environmental hazards. Adam Finkel’s primary research interests are (1) quantifying and communicating the uncertainties in risk estimates, and critically examining the claim that risk estimates are invariably too “conservative”; (2) accounting for variations in human susceptibility to environmental and occupational disease; and (3) evaluating policies and technologies that show promise for reducing environmental and occupational exposures simultaneously, rather than transferring risks from one population to the other. He has published more than 60 articles on risk assessment and management in the scientific, economic, legal, and popular literature, and is co-author of several books, including Worst Things First? The Debate over Risk-Based National Environmental Priorities (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1994) and Does Regulation Kill Jobs? (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).
The call was moderated by Michael Lerner, President of Commonweal.
