Environmental Leadership Program

Webinar Featuring: Dr. Jody A. Roberts, ELP Fellow and Associate Director of the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation

12:00 - 12:40pm Eastern

Register Today

Serious efforts currently are underway to reauthorize the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Momentum has been building as a result of chemical regulation efforts in the E.U., concerns about the safety of consumer products, and challenges posed by emerging molecular technologies, such as nano-materials. Calls for reform have been uniform across the spectrum of health and environmental advocacy organizations and the chemical industry. However, disagreements among these stakeholders continue to exist rooted in differing views of the deficiencies of and perceived remedies for the statute.

This presentation will draw on archival research and interviews with those responsible for authoring and implementing TSCA as well an alternative idea on the challenges and opportunities in TSCA reform.

Jody manages the Environmental History and Policy Program in the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. CHF works on projects that sit at the intersection of the chemical sciences and environment and health. Projects are designed to bring deeper historical and social analyses to contemporary problems in the hopes that these insights might offer alternative ways of viewing the problem and therefore new opportunities for creating solutions. The primary focus of our work is to understand the ways in which we, as a society, attempt to control chemicals through traditional and innovative ways. This gives us an opportunity to examine more typical modes of action (e.g., regulation) as well as highlighting the role that community activism and technical innovations can play.

Jody received his B.S. in chemistry from St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa, where he also grew up. Some summer jobs making stain and paint and a year post-graduation smelting aluminum in a research lab helped him realize that he had always been more interested in the context of chemistry than in practicing it. Jody moved to Blacksburg, VA where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. Jody moved to Philadelphia in 2005 and was a fellow at CHF for two years before establishing the Environmental History and Policy Program.