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2005 VCCEP Peer Consultation Core Panel
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Core
panel members are experts with sufficiently broad areas of
expertise to qualify them for service on most or all of the VCCEP
panels. Core panel
members add continuity to the peer consultation program and will
be asked to commit to serve on panels for one year. A
brief biography is provided below for each of the 2005 panel members.
Dr. John Balbus is currently the Director of the
Environmental Health Program for Environmental Defense, where he
is working on projects related to antibiotic resistance, health
impacts of urban sprawl and transportation policy, and chemical
testing and right-to-know. Before
his current position, he served as the founding Director of the
Center for Risk Science and Public Health, as well as an Associate
Professor at the Dr. Balbus received his M.D. from the Dr.
Christopher is currently Staff
Toxicologist in the Human & Ecological Risk Division,
Department of Toxic Substances Control, California Environmental
Protection Agency. His
responsibilities include the review and approval of human health
and ecological risk assessments at military facilities, hazardous
waste sites, and other permitted facilities in the state of Dr.
Christopher has served as an invited peer reviewer for numerous
governmental, private industrial, and consultant organizations.
During the last few years, these include the U.S. EPA for
methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE); Health Canada for acrolein, acrylamide,
acrylonitrile, carbon disulfide, ethylene glycol, ethylene oxide,
N,N-dimethylformamide, N-nitrosodimethylamine, and nonyl phenol
and its ethoxylates; the American Chemistry Council for methods of
assessing cumulative risk for chemical mixtures; and the National
Institute of Justice for the health effects of non-lethal weapons,
including pepper spray and the TASER.
He has served on peer review panels for Toxicology
Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), most recently including indoor air effects following the Prior to
joining the California EPA, Dr. Christopher was Chief Toxicologist
at ICF Kaiser Engineers in Dr.
John DeSesso is Senior
Fellow and Director of the Biomedical Research Institute at
Mitretek Systems. He
holds adjunct faculty appointments at Georgetown University School
of Medicine, Dr. DeSesso was employed for 15 years by The MITRE
Corporation, where he wrote Health Hazard Assessments for the EPA
Office of Toxic Substances in support of its Pre-Manufacturing
Notification Program. For
EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, Dr. DeSesso analyzed toxicity
data submitted for registration of pesticides.
For the EPA Office of Health and Environmental Assessment,
he wrote assessment documents concerning the carcinogenicity,
toxicity, and reproductive effects of existing chemical
substances. For the
FDA, Dr. DeSesso led a team that assessed the relevance to human
health of direct bladder exposure studies conducted in rodents.
He was named to the EPA/ILSI National Work Group on Rodent
Bladder Cancer, where he helped to establish rational and
scientific approaches for applying rodent bladder cancer study
results to human health risk assessment. He
also served on a team that studied the health effects of refined
menhaden oil during FDA’s consideration of its generally
recognized as safe (GRAS) status.
In support of the U.S. Air Force, Dr. DeSesso provides key
expertise in human health risk assessment, including negotiation
of risk assessment protocols on a site-specific basis.
He authored the Air Force approach to ecological risk.
Dr. DeSesso co-authored a hazard evaluation of
trichloroethylene that addressed its potential human
carcinogenicity and co-edited a monograph that assembled the views
of various stakeholders. Prior
to joining MITRE in 1981, Dr. DeSesso was Assistant Professor of
Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Cincinnati College
of Medicine. He is
active in 14 scientific societies and was elected President of the
Teratology Society (1994-95) and of the Mid Atlantic Reproduction
and Teratology Association (MARTA; 2001-02). He served as an
Executive Board member of the Federation of American Societies of
Experimental Biology (FASEB; 1999- 2004). Dr. DeSesso is a
frequent contributor to continuing education courses that deal
with toxicology and risk assessment.
He has provided public commentary regarding scientific
issues before Federal agencies, State legislatures and
congressional committees. Dr.
DeSesso holds a Ph.D. in Anatomy and Teratology from the Medical
College of Virginia and an A.B. in Chemistry from Dr.
Michael Dourson directs Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment
(TERA),
a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the best use of toxicity data
for estimating risk assessment values. TERA's
projects include the development of complex risk assessments, such
as soluble nickel salts; research into improvements of risk
methods, such as differential sensitivity of children and adults
to chemical toxicity, organizing peer review and consultation
meetings for risk assessment topics and documents; and education
and outreach on risk assessment values through lectures and data
bases, including the International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER).
Before
founding TERA
in
1996, Dr. Dourson held leadership roles in the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for fifteen years; as chair of EPA's Reference
Dose (RfD) Work Group, charter member of the EPA's Risk Assessment
Forum and chief of the group that helped create the Integrated
Risk Information System (IRIS) in 1986. Dr.
Dourson received his Ph.D. in Toxicology from the Dr.
Dourson has served on and/or chaired numerous expert panels, such
as EPA’s external peer reviews for IRIS assessments, TERA’s International Toxicity
Estimates for Risk (ITER)
independent peer reviews and consultations, FDA’s Science Board
Subcommittee on Toxicology, and NSF’s Health Advisory Board.
Dr. Dourson has also organized over 16 symposia for 9
different organizations on a variety of topics.
He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology
serving on its Board as President, Vice President, and Treasurer.
He is currently Secretary for the Society for Risk
Analysis. He has also
served as president of the Dose-Response Specialty Group of the
Society for Risk Analysis, of the Society of Toxicology's
Specialty Section on Risk Assessment and of the Ohio Chapter of
the Society for Risk Analysis.
He is currently on the editorial board of three journals.
Dr Dourson has published more than 90 papers on risk assessment
methods, has co-authored over 100 government risk assessment
documents, and has made over 100 invited presentations. Dr.
Hakkinen is on the staff of the European Commission at the EC’s
Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Dr.
Hakkinen is a member of the Scientific Advisory Panel of the ( Dr.
Hakkinen earned a B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from
the Dr.
Hakkinen is a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT), and a
charter member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and the
International Society of Exposure Analysis (ISEA).
He proposed the idea for the “Residential Exposure
Assessment. A Sourcebook, ” developed and published in 2001 via
the expertise and involvement of members of SRA’s Exposure
Assessment Specialty Group, ISEA members, and many others.
Dr. Hakkinen received SRA's Outstanding Service Award in
1996, and was elected to be a councilor of SRA in 2004. He
was on the editorial board of Toxicology and was a
co-editor and co-author of the latest edition of Information
Resources in Toxicology. Further,
he is a co-editor and co-author of the upcoming new edition of the
Encyclopedia of Toxicology.
Dr. Hakkinen has authored and co-authored numerous other
publications, including ones on consumer product exposure and risk
assessments, consumer risk perceptions, toxicological
interactions, respiratory tract toxicology, and computer software
and databases. Dr.
Elaine Cohen Hubal is currently on detail with U.S. EPA’s
National Human and Environmental Effects Laboratory (NHEERL).
She previously served as the Acting Associate Director for
Human Exposure Modeling in the Human Exposure and Atmospheric
Sciences Division of the U.S. EPA’s National Exposure Research
Laboratory (NERL). In
this position, she worked to develop and direct NERL’s human
exposure modeling research program.
This research program is designed to develop modeling tools
and conduct modeling analyses to characterize and estimate human
exposure to environmental pollutants and to reduce uncertainty in
risk assessments for the general population and for highly exposed
subpopulations. A
significant focus of the lab’s human exposure research program
is on understanding and characterizing children’s residential
exposures to environmental contaminants.
She previously worked as a chemical engineer for the
Research Triangle Institute, and Dr.
Hubal received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Dr. Hubal has served on a variety workgroups, panels, and committees. She currently serves as a member of EPA’s Risk Assessment Forum, the Study Design Working Group for the National Children’s Study, ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute Biomonitoring Steering Team, and the Occupational and Environmental Exposures of Skin to Chemicals (OEESC) 2005 Program Committee. Dr. Hubal’s current research interests focus on characterizing exposure-to-dose relationships and enhancing quantitative risk assessment through application of computational tools and a systems approach. Her general research interest is on reducing uncertainty in risk assessment with a specific focus on children’s exposure. She has designed and conducted studies to evaluate dermal exposure assessment approaches and collect exposure factor data in support of the Food Quality Protection Act. She has developed and worked with a variety of computational models to describe the simultaneous mass transport and reaction of inhaled gases in the airway lining. Dr. Hubal has also worked on the development of a modeling platform to predict contaminant fate and transport of environmental pollutants to perform exposure assessments in support of the Hazardous Waste Identification Rule, and conducted research in the area of industrial pollution prevention by developing a framework to evaluate the environmental impact of pollution prevention activities that directly relates the energy requirements to process air, water, and solid waste emissions. Dr. Hubal has published in the areas of children’s exposure and human health risk modeling.Dr.
Sam Kacew is a Professor in the Department of Cellular and
Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, as well as a scientist of
the Dr.
Kacew received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Dr.
Kacew has served on numerous expert panels and committees,
including as a member of the National Advisory Committee on
Environmental Contaminants and the Implications for Child Health,
and as a member of the National Academy of Sciences ( He
has presented hundreds of invited lectures for a variety of
federal and state government agencies, colleges and universities,
private companies, and international organizations.
He was an invited participant to the American Society for
Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Meeting, the Federation
of American Societies for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, the
International Life Sciences Institute, the Chalk River Nuclear
Labs, Turkey Society of Biochemistry, Society of Toxicology of
Taiwan and the Korea Society of Toxicology.
Dr. Kacew is on a number of grant committees and has served as an external referee for grants and fellowships for a wide variety of organizations and government agencies. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, an Associate Editor for Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, an assistant editor for TOMES (Micromedex, Inc.), Guest Editor for Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology special issue on Toxicological Reviews in Fetal Childhood Development as well as a member of the editorial board of a number of other journals. Dr. Kacew has over 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals and books in the area of toxicology, risk assessment, and children’s health. He has also served as an editor for a number of books on toxicology and children. Dr.
Chad Sandusky is currently Director of Research and senior
toxicology advisor to the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine (PCRM), a non-profit organization that promotes good
nutrition, conducts clinical trials and promotes nonanimal
experimental methods in medical and scientific research.
For PCRM, Dr. Sandusky coordinates the review and
preparation of comments on the EPA's High Production Volume
Challenge Program (HPV) and Voluntary Children's Chemical
Evaluation Program (VCCEP) chemical assessments.
As such, he stresses the weight-of-evidence approach in
these assessments and the development of exposure scenarios as key
to the success of these programs. He is actively engaged in
identifying methods which use alternatives to animal testing to
meet the needs of the safety assessments, including tests
undergoing validation at the Dr. Sandusky was the past Manager of Toxicology and
Risk Assessment at TAS and ENVIRON and has extensive experience at
both the EPA and as a consultant in pesticide toxicology as well
as exposure and risk assessments.
For example, he evaluated the toxicology of pesticides and
extrapolated these effects in risk assessments; directed the
dietary exposure and risk assessments for agrochemicals and other
potentially toxic residues in foods using the TAS Dietary exposure
software; served as toxicology team leader and senior author of
numerous EPA documents, including Registrations Standards and
Position Documents; and since the passage of the FQPA in August
1996, coordinated the review and assessment of numerous
agrochemicals to address the full range of new requirements,
including: assessing aggregate exposure from multiple pathways
(e.g., drinking water and residential use),
cumulative exposure to chemicals with a common mode of
action, accounting for potential sensitivity to infants and
children, and assessing the potential for endocrine disruption.
Dr.
Sandusky has extensive international experience including the
coordination and submission of dossiers for the EU Reauthorization
process under EU 91/414 and presentation of the results to member
states. Dr. Sandusky
also represented the Dr.
Sandusky received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Dr.
Kimberly M. Thompson is Associate Professor of Risk Analysis and
Decision Science in the Departments of Health Policy and
Management and Society, Human Development, and Health at the
Harvard School of Public Health. She is the Director of the Kid
Risk Project that seeks to improve the lives of children by using
analytical methods to characterize children's risks and strategies
to reduce those risks. Dr.
Thompson directs a professional education course on Probabilistic
Risk Analysis: Assessment, Management, and Communication, and she
seeks to effectively integrate technological, social, political,
legal, and economic issues into risk analyses that inform public
policy and improve decision making.
Her research interests focus on the issues related to
developing and applying quantitative methods for risk assessment
and risk management, and consideration of the public policy
implications associated with including uncertainty and variability
in risk characterization. Dr. Thompson
received a Sc.D. in Environmental Health from Dr. Thompson has written over 50 peer-reviewed journal publications in the areas of human health modeling, probabilistic risk assessment, children’s health and risk communication. She has also reviewed manuscripts for over a dozen journals, including the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Risk Analysis, Health Policy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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