Phil Brown

PHIL BROWN is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences, and director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University. He began working on environmental health in the mid-1980s when he wrote No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action, about the Woburn childhood leukemia cluster. His other books are Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement, Perspectives in Medical Sociology, Illness and the Environment, Social Movements in Health, and Contested Illnesses: Citizens, Science and Health Social Movements. His current research includes biomonitoring and household exposure to chemicals and particulate matter, social policy and regulation of flame retardant chemicals and perfluorinated compounds, and techniques and ethics of reporting data to study participants. He co-directs the Community Engagement Core and Research Translation Core of Northeastern University’s Superfund Research Program. He directs an NSF training grant, “New Directions in Environmental Ethics: Emerging Contaminants, Emerging Technologies, and Beyond,” that supports doctoral students and postdocs.