Professor plans talk at SRU

Lessons from environmental disaster can teach us about life, death and sex, she says.
SLIPPERY ROCK -- In celebration of Earth Day, Dr. Devra Davis, director of the Center for Environmental Oncology and a professor in the department of epidemiology at the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh, will present a free lecture, "How the Environment Shapes Life, Death and Sex: Lessons from When Smoke Ran Like Water," at 5 p.m. Thursday at Slippery Rock University, Vincent Science Hall, Room 204.
Davis' book "When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution," was a National Book Award Finalist in 2002. The work describes the impacts of pollution and toxins on human health and gives examples of efforts by industry and politicians to discredit the work of scientists trying to protect health. The title was inspired by the 1948 air pollution disaster in nearby Donora, Pa., where Davis grew up.
She has a distinguished history working to protect human health and was appointed by President Clinton to the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. As the former senior advisor to the assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, Davis has counseled leading officials in the U.S., United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank.
She also was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yeshiva University and Stern College for 1996-97 and a Scholar-in-Residence and executive director of the board on environmental studies and toxicology at the U.S. National Research Council, part of the National Academy of Science, 1983-93.
Davis holds her bachelor of science degree in physiological psychology and her master of arts degree in sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed her doctorate in science studies at the University of Chicago, as a Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellow and completed her M.P.H. in epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University, as a senior National Cancer Institute post-doctoral fellow.
She has authored more than 170 publications in books and journals ranging from Scientific American to the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Lancet, and the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other mass media outlets.