Phil Landrigan

A pediatrician and world-leading public health advocate, Dr. Phil Landrigan serves as the Chair of the SAB and is a member of the Heartland Study management team. Dr. Landrigan integrates clinical practice, toxicology research, and the tools of epidemiology to understand how hazardous exposures in the environment impact children’s health and to discover new ways to keep infants and children healthy. He is the founding director of Boston College’s Program in Global Public Health and the Common Good and a long-time consultant to the World Health Organization.

During his long academic and research career, Dr. Landrigan has studied how lead, pesticides and other toxic chemicals harm children’s developing brains and nervous system. In 1988, he was asked by Dr. Benbrook, then Executive Director of the Board on Agriculture in the National Academy of Sciences, to serve as Chair of a newly formed NAS committee conducting a Congressionally mandated study of the impacts of pesticides on infant development and children’s health. The 1993 report of this Committee, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children, was warmly received by all stakeholders and was ground-breaking in its impact. On the day of its release, both the House and Senate held hearings on the health hazards of pesticides, and media coverage was extensive and positive. The report’s major recommendations were incorporated — in some cases nearly verbatim — into the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), the US federal pesticide law and is the first environmental statute mandating distinct, additional regulatory protections for infants and children.

Dr. Landrigan has been honored as the EPA’s Children’s Environmental Health Champion, and is a recipient of the US Public Health Service’s Meritorious Service Medal. He serves as the Chair of the Ramazzini Institute’s Science Advisory Board, and has helped shape the HS-Ramazzini Institute partnership.

The HHRA is honored to have Phil lend his decades of experience to the alliance — both serving as Chair of the Heartland Study Science Advisory Board and member of the Heartland Study management team.