Dr. Goodman, who holds a doctorate in toxicology from Johns Hopkins College, is among the firm’s most outstanding scientists, serving to to defend industries as various as tobacco, plastics and fossil fuels towards well being issues — a mirrored image of the widespread apply by which varied industries rent specialists who publicly help their place.
On Monday, Dr. Goodman is scheduled to testify earlier than California’s Bay Space Air High quality Administration District, which regulates air air pollution in 9 counties surrounding San Francisco Bay, a few pollutant referred to as advantageous particulate matter that outcomes from burning gasoline, oil, and diesel gas, in addition to wooden. She is showing on behalf of the Western States Petroleum Affiliation, a fossil gas trade group, in response to the assembly agenda.
She has additionally helped develop knowledgeable testimony for Philip Morris in a class-action lawsuit that went to trial in 2015, portraying the tobacco big’s best-selling Marlboro Lights cigarettes as being safer for people who smoke. In a call for the plaintiffs, Choose Edward Leibensperger of Massachusetts Superior Court docket mentioned Gradient’s evaluation “was proven to be inconsistent and opposite to the consensus of the scientific group.”
At Gradient, Dr. Goodman additionally co-authored an article, sponsored by the now-defunct American Plastics Council, criticizing dozens of educational articles that had raised issues over Bisphonal-A, or BPA, a chemical used to make exhausting plastics reminiscent of water and juice bottles. A physique of analysis means that BPA and different bisphenols can act as endocrine disruptors that intrude with hormones within the physique. The chemical substances have been linked to diminished fertility, earlier puberty in boys and behavioral issues in youngsters.
In congressional testimony, Dr. Goodman has argued towards regulatory requirements for mercury and air toxics, and has criticized research linking air air pollution and mortality, ceaselessly figuring out herself as an unbiased scientist, regardless of Gradient’s work for company shoppers. In articles funded by the American Petroleum Institute, she has additionally attacked analysis linking publicity to smog-causing ozone to deaths from respiratory ailments.
Frederick vom Saal, a professor emeritus of biology on the College of Missouri, is among the many scientists whose work Dr. Goodman has criticized. “There are over 1,000 publications on BPA, however she claimed none of them stand as much as their requirements,” he mentioned. He mentioned her argument is actually, “‘You don’t want to fret about something as a result of there’s so little publicity,’” he mentioned, including that many years of analysis has proven that to not be true.
Gradient declined to remark.
Dr. Goodman’s presence in Multnomah shocked folks on the county listening to. The county, which incorporates most of Portland, just lately handed a decision aimed toward lowering the well being results of air air pollution.
