Weissman Center's Series Continues with Panel on Environmental Hazards

"How can we reduce environmental health risks and spread them more evenly across economic groups and nations?"

- A PANEL DISCUSSION

There is much evidence that the burdens of environmental hazards fall disproportionately on low-income and minority groups. On Thursday, October 21, at 7:30 pm, a distinguished panel of experts will gather at Mount Holyoke to discuss how much health risk is acceptable, who should make that decision, and how we can reduce environmental health risks and spread them more evenly across economic groups and nations. The event will be held in Gamble Auditorium. "Environmental Hazards" continues the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for Leadership's innovative series "Silent Killers?: Environmental Contaminants and Health."

"What are the best policies to reduce the unequal distribution of environmental hazards, and who pays for them? That is an issue of heated debate, and our panelists are among the foremost experts dealing with this issue on a daily basis," said Eva Paus, codirector for the Weissman Center. The panel discussion will be moderated by Judith Kurland, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Boston and a 1967 Mount Holyoke graduate. Kurland served as Boston's commissioner of health and hospitals from 1988 to 1993. During that time, she initiated the Healthy Boston program, a community development initiative to improve citywide health using models of economic development, community empowerment, service integration, and population-based health and education programs.

The panel will also include Michele Beigel Corash, head of the environmental law group and partner at the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster, former legal counsel to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and a 1967 MHC graduate; John Graham, director of the Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard University; Nancy Maxwell, senior scientist in epidemiology at the Silent Spring Institute of Newton and Hyannis, Massachusetts; and Vernice Miller, a member of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council of the EPA and cofounder of West Harlem Environmental Action.

The final event in the Weissman environmental series is a November 17 symposium on the threat of environmental pollutants wreaking havoc with wildlife and human hormones and reproduction. Visit: www.mtholyoke.edu/program/wcl for more information.