Safer Chemicals

Dana Boyd Barr

Dr. Dana Boyd Barr is a professor of environmental health in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health (GDEH) at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. An internationally recognized leader in exposure science, her research portfolio spans emerging public health challenges such as COVID-19 and health disparities, as well as foundational environmental health investigations, mostly with a primary focus on maternal-child health. Barr directs the Laboratory for Exposure Assessment and Development in Environmental Research, which serves as the targeted analysis core for the HERCULES Exposome Research Center and the biomarker core for the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network trial. In addition, she co-directs the development core for Emory’s Children’s Translational Research Center, demonstrating her leadership in advancing translational and interdisciplinary environmental health science. Over a 37-year career, Barr has been a pioneer in developing analytical methods to assess human exposure to a wide range of environmental toxicants, including PFAS, current-use and legacy pesticides, phthalates, organochlorine compounds (e.g., PCBs), and other known and emerging contaminants. She has authored or co-authored more than 425 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, significantly shaping the field of biomonitoring and exposure assessment.

Barr is past president of the International Society of Exposure Science (ISES) and former editor in chief and current editor emeritus of its flagship Nature journal, the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. She currently serves as executive editor of Environmental Health Perspectives and an associate editor for Nature’s Scientific Reports.

Barr’s scholarly contributions have been recognized with numerous prestigious honors, including ISES’s Excellence in Exposure Science Award and Daisey Outstanding Young Investigator Award, two Health and Human Services Secretary’s Awards for her work on diethylene glycol and methyl parathion poisoning investigations, the 2004 Federal Scientific Employee of the Year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Mackel Memorial Award for outstanding collaboration between epidemiology and laboratory sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Silver Medal for superior service to environmental health, two Excellence in Teaching awards in GDEH, top 1,000 Best Female Scientists in the World (research.com), and Thomson Reuters’ Highly Cited Researchers and Most Influential Scientist awards.

Barr holds a bachelor’s degree in biology/chemistry from Brenau University and a doctorate in analytical chemistry from Georgia State University. 

Weihsueh A. Chiu

Dr. Weihsueh A. Chiu is a professor in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology at Texas A&M University. He also serves as vice chair of the university’s Interdisciplinary Faculty of Toxicology, overall deputy director and risk and geospatial sciences core director of the Research Center, and data science core director of the Center for Environmental Health Research. He previously worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for more than 14 years.

Chiu’s research spans human health risk assessment, including toxicokinetics, physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling, in vitro-to-in vivo extrapolation, dose-response assessment, characterizing uncertainty/variability, systematic review, meta-analysis, environmental/climate justice, and cumulative impacts, with particular interest in Bayesian, probabilistic, and other quantitative methods. He has contributed to over 200 peer-reviewed journal publications and numerous government and international agency reports.

Chiu has served on or chaired expert panels and work groups for multiple federal and state government agencies, numerous national and international organizations, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Chiu received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University, master’s and doctoral degrees in physics from Princeton University, and a certificate in science, technology, and environmental policy from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

Renee Hackenmiller-Paradis

Dr. Renee Hackenmiller-Paradis is a senior leader in sustainable chemistry, environmental health, and regulatory strategy with experience shaping enterprise programs enabling market access and advancing safer materials across global product portfolios.

She leads sustainable product, packaging, and chemicals management at Lululemon, integrating safer chemistry, traceability, and circularity into product creation. Previously, Hackenmiller-Paradis held leadership roles at Nike, driving global chemical governance, and led environmental health programs for the state of Oregon.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology from the University of Washington, a Master of Public Health degree in health management and policy from Portland State University, and a doctorate in genetics from the University of Chicago. 

Tamarra James-Todd

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is professor of environmental reproductive epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she directs the Environmental Reproductive Justice Lab for Research, Education, and Community Engagement. Her research focuses on the role of environmental and consumer product chemicals and cardiometabolic health across the reproductive life course using a solution-oriented, community-engaged research approach.

She is deputy director of the Harvard Chan P30 Center and co-director of the Metals and Metal Mixtures, Cognitive Aging, Remediation and Exposure Sources Superfund Research Center’s community engagement core. 

James-Todd holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University, a Master of Public Health degree in international health from Boston University, and a doctorate in epidemiology from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Stephen Klump

Dr. Stephen Klump is an expert in food packaging and food contact material (FCM) safety and regulatory compliance. With more than 20 years of experience in the food and beverage industry, Klump has a wealth of knowledge on the chemicals used in FCMs and laboratory experience on chemical migration from FCMs into foods and beverages.

He developed his expertise while working for Nestle at the FCM analytical testing laboratory in Lausanne, Switzerland. Later, he worked in regional and global roles overseeing the FCM safety and compliance program at Nestle. Klump previously headed the Food Safety Alliance for Packaging, a food packaging industry trade group, which considered chemicals and relevant government regulations that affected FCMs. Following his work at Nestle, he moved to PPG Industries, where until his recent retirement he led the global FCM regulatory compliance team for cookware and bakeware coatings.

Klump holds a master’s degree in inorganic chemistry from St. Louis University and a doctorate in organic chemistry from Ohio State University.

Al McGartland

Dr. Al McGartland is the director of economic policy at New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. There, he integrates science, economics, and law to better inform public policy. McGartland was director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Center for Environmental Economics from 2005 to 2025, advising the agency’s senior leadership on regulatory analyses, science, economics, and environmental policy. He also developed interdisciplinary risk assessment, benefit assessment, and environmental justice methods to be used in the EPA’s regulatory analyses. McGartland supported numerous interagency and White House initiatives, including projects on the social cost of greenhouse gases, the frontiers of cost-benefit analysis, and the valuation of reduced health risks from environmental contaminants.

He is a fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis.

McGartland holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Duquesne University, and a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate, both from the University of Maryland, and has published in numerous journals, including Science, American Economic Review, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Environmental Management, Lancet, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 

Michele La Merrill

Michele La Merrill is a professor in and vice chair of the Department of Environmental Toxicology at the University of California, Davis. Her lab research focuses on susceptibility―e.g., developmental, dietary, and genetic―to metabolic and endocrine disruption in integrated studies of cells in tissue culture, animal models, and people.

She joined UC Davis in 2013 after receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology from Reed College and a doctorate in toxicology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, followed by a Master in Public Health degree in epidemiology during her postdoctoral fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

She is a member of the Pharmacology & Toxicology Graduate Group, the Integrative Genetics and Genomics Graduate Group, Epidemiology Graduate Group, the Genome Center, the Environmental Health Sciences Center, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center, all at UC Davis. She is also an adjunct professor in the Division of Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ninja Reineke

Dr. Ninja Reineke is head of science at the environmental organization CHEM Trust. From 2003 to 2012, she worked as the European Union senior chemicals policy officer for World Wide Fund for Nature in Germany and Brussels.

In 2013, Reineke joined CHEM Trust to work at the science-policy interface to advance the uptake of the latest environment and health science in regulation. Her main work areas are the EU chemicals laws REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) and CLP (Classification, Labeling and Packaging), with a focus on endocrine disrupters and persistent chemicals.

She is a member of the endocrine disrupter expert group of the European Chemicals Agency and has been leading CHEM Trust’s work on endocrine-disrupting chemicals criteria and new EU hazard classes for endocrine disrupters. Other work areas include the combination effects of chemical mixtures and human biomonitoring studies. Since December 2018, she has chaired the Management Board of CHEM Trust Europe, based in Hamburg, Germany. In addition to her CHEM Trust work, she also provides technical expertise and support for other nonprofit organizations, institutes, and foundations. 

Reineke holds a diploma degree in chemistry and a doctorate in marine pollution from the University of Hamburg.

Rachel Rogers

Dr. Rachel Rogers is a managing toxicologist and consultant with Gradient. She is experienced in toxicology and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure science. Her primary responsibilities include human exposure assessment, toxicology in support of human health risk assessment, computational modeling, and reviewing specific chemical exposures to assess potential human health risks. 

Before joining Gradient, Rogers was an environmental health scientist for nearly 17 years at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry/National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she conducted health assessments, risk assessments, and exposure investigations in communities across the country and served as a subject matter expert in PFAS. From 2024 to 2025, Rogers managed the PFAS portfolio for the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Biden administration. 

She has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed papers related to environmental toxicology, PFAS exposure, and computational modeling.

Rogers holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Georgia, a master’s degree in reproductive toxicology and environmental studies from Brown University, and a doctorate in computational toxicology from the University of Georgia.

Sheela Sathyanarayana

Dr. Sheela Sathyanarayana is professor of pediatrics and professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute, where she is the associate director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development.

Sathyanarayana has spent her career researching adverse health impacts of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastics, on child health outcomes. She is the principal investigator for the Infant Development and Environment Study, a multicenter cohort study of phthalate exposures in pregnancy and health outcomes in children. She is currently Medical Project Investigator for the UH3, Mediators and Modifiers of Prenatal Environmental Exposures and Child Neurodevelopment: DNA Methylation, Prenatal Diet, and Cognitive Stimulation Study within the National Institutes of Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program.

Sathyanarayana was chair of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee and was on the National Academies of Sciences Committee on Endocrine-Related Low-Dose Toxicity. She was also a member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, which advises the agency on risk assessments related to the Toxic Substances Control Act.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and policy and philosophy from Duke University, a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Washington, and a medical degree from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.

Gina Solomon

Dr. Gina Solomon is the chief of occupational, environmental, and climate medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She oversees clinical occupational health activities at three hospital sites, leads research efforts in environmental health, and directs the occupational and environmental medicine residency program. She is also the principal investigator of the Western States Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit.

Solomon was previously the deputy secretary for science and health at the California Environmental Protection Agency. She also worked at the Public Health Institute, where she established and led the Achieving Resilient Communities project to develop actionable interventions to reduce climate change impacts in farmworker communities. Early in her career, she was a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she led work on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and children’s health.

Solomon has published over 100 papers, chapters, and reports and has served on advisory committees for the U.S. EPA, the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and the state of California.

Solomon received her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Brown University and a medical degree from Yale University, and she completed her Master of Public Health degree, residency, and fellowship training in internal medicine and occupational and environmental medicine at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Medical School.

Russell S. Thomas

Dr. Russell S. Thomas is executive director and vice president of Chemical Insights, a part of the nonprofit Underwriters Laboratories Research Institutes, with a mission to provide unbiased research on chemicals and their risks to human health. Thomas has over 25 years of chemical safety research experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Before joining Chemical Insights, he worked for 12 years in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development.

He has a broad, multidisciplinary background with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, a master’s degree in radiation ecology and health physics, and a doctorate in toxicology. His postdoctoral training was in molecular biology and genomics.

Laura Vandenberg

Dr. Laura Vandenberg is associate vice chancellor and vice provost for research and engagement and professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Trained as a developmental biologist and endocrinologist, Vandenberg maintains an active research program focused on the health effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Most recently, her work explores the effects of estrogenic environmental pollutants on the development, function, and diseases of the mammary gland, and she is an expert in the “low-dose effects” of EDCs. Her work has been funded by National Institutes of Health, industry startup company Sudoc LLC, and several foundations.

She is an author on more than 130 published papers, more than 27,000 citations, and 20 book chapters. In 2021 she co-published a textbook on EDCs, and in 2026 was a co-lead author on the updated State of Science report on EDCs organized by the U.N. Environment Program and the World Health Organization.

Vandenberg’s work has been high-profile, leading to numerous invitations to give keynote and platform talks and interviews with news outlets. She has been named a Clarivate Global Highly Cited Researcher three times, and her work has been recognized with awards from the Cornell Douglas Foundation, the FUCOBI Foundation of Ecuador, the Collaborative for Health & Environment, and Clean Water Action, among others. 

Vandenberg holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Cornell University and a doctorate in cell, molecular, and developmental biology from Tufts University School of Medicine.