Details

Bernard Goldstein Named Chair of EPA Committee


Bernard D. Goldstein, MD, professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and past GSPH dean, has been appointed to chair an ad hoc committee that will conduct a study to help define the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) efforts to incorporate sustainability concepts into its programs.

Under the Science and Technology for Sustainability (STS) program and at the request of the EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the committee will conduct a study titled, “Incorporating Sustainability in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.” This study will build on existing sustainability efforts in the EPA by strengthening the analytic and scientific basis for sustainability as it applies to human health and environmental protection within the agency’s decision-making process.

The study will address such questions as:
• What should be the operational framework for sustainability for EPA?
• How can the EPA decision-making process rooted for more than two decades in the risk assessment/risk management paradigm be integrated into this new sustainability framework?
• What scientific and analytical tools are needed to support the framework?
• What set of strategic metrics and indicators should EPA build to determine if sustainable approaches are or are not being employed successfully?
• Which assessment techniques and accounting protocols should the Agency adopt to inform ongoing efforts to improve Agency sustainability practices and procedures?

The study will be widely disseminated to interested audiences within federal and state governments, industry, universities, and nongovernmental organizations. It will inform the STS companion study, “Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government,” which will examine critical links between key sectors that need to be considered by federal science and resource management agencies.

The study will be introduced at an event on November 30 in Washington, D.C. Speaking and taking questions at the event will be Goldstein; Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences; and Lisa P. Jackson, EPA administrator.



1/07/2011

Search for an Article