1998 Houk Award Recipient

In recognition of his unsurpassed leadership in preventing lead poisoning, the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning and the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health are pleased to present the 1998 Houk Award to Dr. Landrigan. This award will be given to Dr. Landrigan at the start of the International Environmental and Occupational Health: Creating Global Linkages meeting October 18th at the Natcher Center in Bethesda, MD.

Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc is the Ethel H. Wise professor and Chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. he is also a Professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Landrigan obtained his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1967. He interned at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston. He obtained a Master of Science in occupational medicine and a Diploma of Industrial Health from the University of London.

From 1970 to 1985, Dr. Landrigan was a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service. He served as an Epidemic Intelligency Service Officer and then as a Medical Epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. In his years at CDC, Dr. Landrigan participated in epidemiologic studies of measles and rubella; directed research and he developed activities for the Global Smallpox Eradication Program; and established and directed the Environmental Hazards Program of the Bureau of Epidemiology. While with CDC, Dr. Landrigan also served for one year as a field epidemiologist in El Salvador and for another year in northern Nigeria. From 1979 to 1985, as Director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati, he directed the U.S. national program in occupational epidemiology.

Dr. Landrigan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and previously was Editor of Environmental Research. He has chaired committees at the National Academy of Sciences on Environmental Neurotoxicology and Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. He is Chair of the Asbestos Advisory Board of the State of New York. In New York City, he served on the Mayor's Advisory Committee to Prevent Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning. He is Chair of the New York State Advisory Council on Lead Poisoning Prevention. From 1997-98, Dr. Landrigan served as senior Advisor to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Children's Health and the Environment. He was responsible at EPA for establishing a new Office of Children's Health Protection.

Dr. Landrigan has been involved since the early 1970s in studying the epidemiology and toxicology of lead and he has been an advocate nationally and internationally against lead posoning. He is especially interested in delineating the subclinical effects of lead on the brain, the periphereal nervous system and the kidneys. Through his work, much of it undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Herbert Needleman, Dr. Landrigan has demonstrated that lead is toxic to children and to adults even at extremely low levels. Dr. Landrigan has contributed substantially to efforts to reduce the lead content of gasoline, of paint, and of consumer products, and he has contributed also to efforts to control lead poisoning in the workplace. Dr. Landrigan is greatly concerned at present about efforts to introduce neurotoxic manganese compounds to gasoline as substitutes for lead.

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