Adjunct Clinical Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan School of Public Health
Dr. Adam M. Finkel is a Clinical Professor of Environmental Health Sciences (Adjunct) at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and is also an expert witness specializing in plaintiffs’ exposure to toxicants in the workplace and general environment. From 2009 to 2017, he was Executive Director of the Penn Program on Regulation, where he was also a Senior Fellow at the Penn Law School. From 2004 to 2009, he was a Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the UMDNJ School of Public Health. From 2000 to 2003, Dr. Finkel was Regional Administrator for the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in Denver, Colorado, responsible for OSHA’s regulatory enforcement, compliance assistance, and outreach activities in the six-state Rocky Mountain region (Region VIII). Prior to that (1995-2000), he was Director of Health Standards Programs at OSHA headquarters, and was responsible for promulgating and evaluating risk-based regulations to protect the nation’s workers from chemical, radiological, and biological hazards. Dr. Finkel holds an Sc.D. in environmental health sciences from the Harvard School of Public Health, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, an A.B. in biology from Harvard College, and is a Certified Industrial Hygienist. He is co-author of four books, including the 2014 volume Does Regulation Kill Jobs? (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press). In 2006, he received the David P. Rall Award for Advocacy in Public Health from the American Public Health Association, for “a career in advancing science in the service of public health protection.” He lives in Dalton, NH (spring-summer-fall) and Pennington, New Jersey (winter) with his wife (a clinical psychologist) and has a 26-year-old daughter (music teacher); he is also a professional singer and choral conductor.
With few exceptions, every industrial chemical exposure that threatens “environmental health” emerged from a workplace, often at a higher concentration. A similar pattern often occurs with ionizing radiation and even…