Amy Kyle

Amy D. Kyle has research and teaching appointments at the School of Public Health at the University of California Berkeley. Her research focuses on analysis to improve the policy basis for protection of health from environmental contaminants. It includes the development of indicators and measures that better integrate information about environmental conditions important for health for use in policy-making, cumulative burdens of exposure to environmental contaminants, children's environmental health, and policy approaches to persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic pollutants. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~adkyle/ In 2000, she worked with a team at the US EPA that recently produced the EPA's first-ever review of measures that track factors important for children's environmental health. A report was issued in December and is available on-line. http://www.epa.gov/children/indicators/ She teaches a seminar for graduate students from several disciplines on the role that scientists and science play in defining the policy-marking process for the environment and health. Topics for 2001 include the endocrine disruption hypothesis and the policy response and the use of the precautionalry principle in environmental policy. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ph298/ Amy continues to spend part of her time working with non-governmental organizations and government agencies on environmental health issues. http://www.envirohealthpolicy.net In 2000 her projects included: working with the Clean Water Fund on an inventory of sources of mercury; working with NRDC on an analysis of the contribution of environmental factors that contribute to the development of cancer in children; and working with California Communities Against Toxics on soil contamination issues and methods of air pollution assessment. Amy was a Switzer fellow and a leadership grant recipient. The leadership grant funded her work to develop a report, Contaminated Catch: the Public Health Threat from Toxics in Fish, released by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 1998, which received extensive print and radio coverage in communities areound the country. This has led to opportunities to work with a variety of smaller groups to develop information to support policy to reduce pollution that contaminates fish. (Excerpts are available on NRDC's web site at http://www.nrdc.org in the "publications" group.