Recording of David Carpenter: “Science for the People”
This video documents the March 19, 2023 celebration of Dr. David Carpenter’s long career as an environmental advocate! Dr. Carpenter speaks, along with some of his graduate students and colleagues, as well as representatives of some of the many grassroots organizations who have worked with David over his decades-long career, along with former EPA Region 2 administrator Judith Enck and other local luminaries. There’s an update on the ongoing legal case surrounding Monsanto’s pollution of the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, and other local environmental struggles. But mostly we gathered to acknowledge a true hero of the environmental justice movement!
The celebration closed with a free community meal of soup and cake.
Co-sponsored by NATURE Lab, United University Professions- Albany Chapter, Beyond Plastics, Clean Air Coalition of Greater Ravena-Coeymans, Rensselaer Environmental Coalition, PAUSE, Green Education & Legal Fund, UNCAGED, Environmental Advocates NY, Riverkeeper, NYPIRG, Lights Out Norlite, Healthy Schools Network, Community Advocates for a Sustainable Environment, Stop NY Fracked Gas Pipeline, Zero Waste Capital District, Housatonic River Initiative, Inc, and Housatonic Environmental Action League, Inc.
David Carpenter is a public health physician whose current position is Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, as well as Professor of Environmental Health Sciences within the School of Public Health at the University at Albany. After receiving his MD degree from Harvard Medical School he chose a career of research and public health. After research positions at the National Institute of Mental Health and the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, he came to Albany in 1980 as the Director of the Wadsworth Center for Laboratories and Research of the New York State Department of Health, the third largest public health laboratory in the US after NIH and CDC. In an effort to build ties to an academic program, he initiated efforts to create a partnership between the New York State Department of Health and the University at Albany, resulting in the creation of the School of Public Health in 1985. He was then appointed as the founding Dean of the School of Public Health, a position he held until 1998 when he became the Director of the Institute of Health and the Environment. In 2011 the Institute for Health and the Environment was declared a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization in Environmental Health. While his early research was study of animal and cellular models of brain function, his more recent studies have focused on environmental causes of human disease. He has more than 485 peer-reviewed publications.
