CAN'T SMOKE IN A RESTAURANT? HERE'S WHY
James Pirkle, MD, PhD, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"We need to work to prevent the flow of disease by doing research to benefit people's health. The most proven, cost-effective ‘treatment' is, and always will be, prevention."
Second-hand smoke, exposure to lead, plastics — these public health concerns could not have been addressed with such lasting impact without the work of James Pirkle, MD, PhD.
Dr. Pirkle has spent the last 28 years advancing the science of biomonitoring, which measures the actual levels of human exposure to various environmental chemicals. Through this research, Pirkle and his team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have identified problematic levels of exposure to environmental chemicals and the health effects these levels pose. His work has positively impacted society in many ways.
In the 1980s, Pirkle and his team discovered that exposure to lead from gasoline was causing increasingly high lead levels in children. As a result of this research, gasoline manufacturers were prohibited from using lead. Not only did this protect children against future health problems from lead exposure, but reports showed that by removing lead from gasoline, the IQ of the average American child increased by about 10 points.
After measuring levels of cotinine — a marker of exposure to tobacco smoke — in both smokers and non-smokers in the early 1990s, Pirkle's research showed that 88% of all Americans had been exposed to second-hand smoke. Policymakers responded by restricting smoking in public places and work environments. Less than 10 years later, Pirkle's reports showed that cotinine levels in Americans had decreased by 75 percent.
On an even broader scale, a vast majority (87%) of the techniques that today's researchers use to measure the effects of exposure to more than 450 environmental chemicals were introduced by Pirkle and his team.
"An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure ... an old saying, but very true," says Pirkle. "Because we always will be working with limited resources, we must identify the best cost-effective preventions that work in real-life, and the only way to do this is through research." Dr. Pirkle stresses the immeasurable value of prevention on cost, the individual, and society.
"We need to work to prevent the flow of disease by doing research to benefit people's health. The most proven, cost-effective ‘treatment' is, and always will be, prevention."
Pirkle concludes, "Congress must sustain its investment in public health in order to attract the best and brightest scientists. Only through this sustained investment will we be able to continue to save lives through public health research on prevention."