Environmental History and Policy
Program Manager: Jody Roberts

The past three decades have seen a convergence of thought and action at the intersection of chemistry and the environment:

• New scientific knowledge about the presence and persistence of chemicals in the environment;
• Consumer mobilization and formation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and
• Increasingly expansive regulation of the chemical industry.

If one lesson can be taken from these developments, it’s that collaboration—not conflict—among industries, governments, NGOs, and publics is the only way to adequately address the scale and scope of the environmental challenges we face.

Research, analysis, and publications
The environmental history and policy program

• Analyzes various themes related to the intersection of the chemical sciences and the environment, including regulation, environmental and public health, and the establishment of sustainable chemical practices;
• Engages in research projects related to topics such as green chemistry and manufacturing, human biomonitoring, feedstocks and energy, sustainability indicators, and climate change;
• Enables collaboration between intellectual and stakeholder communities from governments, industries, academe, NGOs, and publics;
• Offers perspectives on the relationship between communities and environmental challenges at the local, national, and international scale; and
• Provides research results and paths of communication through the publication of its activities in scholarly journals and books, white papers, and Web-based formats.

Recent conference
2007 Cain Conference: "New Chemical Bodies: Biomonitoring, Body Burden, and the Uncertain Threat of Environmental Endocrine Disrupters"

Podcasts
Further discussion on body burden and endocrine disrupters:

Jody Roberts: The program manager of environmental history and policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation describes the issues explored in the 2007 Cain Conference.

Pete Myers: The founder and CEO of Environmental Health Sciences discusses his keynote speech at the Cain Conference, "A Revolution in the Environmental Health Sciences: New Opportunities for Disease Prevention."

Terry Collins: The Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry and director of the Institute for Green Oxidation Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University discusses the components of a sustainable technology base.

Chemical Heritage articles

"Monitoring Our Chemical Bodies," by Jody Roberts. Scientists face challenges dealing with the information government biomonitoring provides.

"The Curious Case of Atrazine," by Jody Roberts. Where science, government, and business intersect, scientists grapple with the notion of uncertainty.