Dr. Landrigan teaches epidemiology and/or environmental medicine at the University of Global Health Equity in Butaro, Rwanda, and mentoring Harvard students, trainees, and faculty.
The 1993 National Academy of Science report on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children that Dr. Landrigan directed was critical in informing policy makers of children’s unique vulnerabilities to pesticides and other toxic chemicals in the environment. It triggered a paradigm shift in risk assessment and provided the blueprint for the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the major law governing pesticide use in the US, and the only federal environmental law that contains explicit provisions for the protection of children’s health.
More recently, Dr. Landrigan has been a leader in the development and implementation of the National Children’s Study, the largest study of children’s health ever launched in the United States.
Dr. Landrigan has also been centrally involved in the medical and epidemiologic studies that followed the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. By raising awareness of the negative health consequences that resulted from exposure at the World Trade Center, Dr. Landrigan contributed to passage in 2010 of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health Act, which authorized five more years of health monitoring and medical treatment for the rescue workers and responders at Ground Zero.
Recently, Dr. Landrigan has been appointed Dean for Global Health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He will be involved in leading medical student programs in global health and building strong ties to the health systems of developing nations.
Prior to joining Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1985, Dr. Landrigan served at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He established the environmental epidemiology unit at CDC that has grown into the National Center for Environmental Health. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal of the U.S. Public Health Service.
Dr. Landrigan’s research focuses on toxic chemicals in the environment and their effects on children’s health and development.
Dr. Landrigan’s landmark studies in the early 1970s of children exposed to lead near a large ore smelter in El Paso, Texas were among the first to show that lead can cause brain damage to children at levels too low to cause clinically evident signs and symptoms – a phenomenon now termed “subclinical toxicity.” This work in combination with the research of Herb Needleman, MD, then at Harvard Medical School, and Joel Schwartz, PhD, now at HSPH, was critical in persuading the EPA to remove lead from gasoline and paint, actions that have resulted in a 95% decline in lead poisoning in US children. This success has been emulated in nations worldwide.
Occup Environ Med
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Lancet Glob Health
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Psychol Med
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