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HOME > BOARD OF DIRECTORS
DR. DAVID CARPENTER, PBC
TREASURER
University of Albany, SUNY, USA
David O. Carpenter is a public health physician
whose current position is Director of the Institute
for Health and the Environment at the University
at Albany, as well as Professor of Environmental
Health Sciences within the School of Public
Health at the University at Albany. After
receiving his MD degree from Harvard Medical
School he chose a career of research and public
health. After research positions at the National
Institute of Mental Health and the Armed Forces
Radiobiology Research Institute, he came to
Albany in 1980 as the Director of the Wadsworth
Center for Laboratories and Research of the New
York State Department of Health, the third
largest public health laboratory in the US after
NIH and CDC. In an effort to build ties to an
academic program, he initiated efforts to create a
partnership between the New York State
Department of Health and the University at
Albany, resulting in the creation of the School of
Public Health in 1985. He was then appointed as
the founding Dean of the School of Public
Health, a position he held until 1998 when he
became the Director of the Institute of Health and
the Environment.
Dr. Carpenter’s research initially was basic
neurobiology, and more recently has primarily
been the study of human disease resulting from
exposure to environmental contaminants. He has
more than 300 peer reviewed publications and
has edited five books.
Beginning in 1986 he directed a large,
interdisciplinary research study on
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), funded by the
Superfund Basic Research Program of the
National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health.
This particular study, supported at over $2
million a year until 2000, was designed around
the PCB contamination coming from the General
Motors Foundry Site in Massena, NY, which is
directly adjacent to the Mohawk Nation of
Akwesasne, a Native American community of
individuals who traditionally eat fish from waters
now heavily contaminated with PCBs. The
investigations included health studies of the
Mohawks, animal toxicology studies of effects of
PCBs on the nervous, immune and endocrine
systems and metabolism, determination of levels
of PCBs in human body fluids, animals from the
region, soils, sediments, air and water and
investigation of several methods for destruction
and removal of PCBs from contaminated soils,
sediments and water. A laboratory for chemical
measurement of PCBs is a central part of our
research team and operates under his direction.
This study has involved over 1,600 members of
the Mohawk Nation, where he has reviewed
analyses of their PCB blood levels and clinical
chemistry results, as well as results taken from
questionnaires. The early investigations at
Akwesasne were focused entirely on
demonstrating that the Mohawks were exposed to
PCBs from consumption of contaminated fish. In
the grant that was funded in the period 1995-2000
the research team began to collect health
information, the analysis of which and results of
which are still being analyzed and published.
Other grant-funded studies of the same
population are ongoing.
Dr. Carpenter has also conducted health effects
studies of other PCB-exposed populations,
including an Alaskan Native population living on
St. Lawrence Island, Alaska (funded by the
National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences and the US Environmental Protection
Agency), residents of Anniston, Alabama who
live near to the Monsanto plant that manufactured
PCBs (funded by the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry) and people
living along the PCB-contaminated portions of
the Hudson River in New York and the
Housatonic River in Massachusetts. He has
published numerous articles based on both human
exposure to PCBs and experimental studies with
animals experimentally exposed to PCBs.
In addition, he has investigated the distribution of
various human diseases in relation to residence
near hazardous waste sites. These studies utilize
the New York State dataset which records
information on every inpatient in state-regulated
hospitals, giving age, sex, race, method of
payment and zip code of residence, as well as all
(up to 15) diseases diagnosed in that patient.
They have matched these data to a
characterization of every zip code in so far as it
contains or abuts an identified hazardous waste
site that either does or does not include persistent
organic pollutants (primarily PCBs). While
detailed individual information is not available
using these data, there are large numbers that
allow one to observe patterns of disease in
relation to residence near to waste sites. They
have studied diseases such as diabetes, heart
disease, stroke, hypertension, thyroid disease,
endocrine disease, asthma and infections, and for
each find elevations in incidence correlated with
residence near to waste sites.
Dr. Carpenter was appointed to the board of the
Pacific Basin Consortium in April 2000. Dr.
Carpenter became Chair of the Consortium in
2004 and Treasurer in 2008.
_________________________
Dr. David O. Carpenter, M.D.
Professor, Environmental Health & Toxicology
School of Public Health, University at Albany,
SUNY
Five University Place, A Wing, Room A217
Rensselaer NY 12144
Tel: (518) 525-2660, 525-2661
Fax: (518) 525-2665
Email: dcarpenter@.albany.edu