Endocrine Disruptors in Plastics: State Policy Options

John Peterson (Pete) Myers, Ph.D. is founder, CEO and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a not-for-profit organization that promotes public understanding of advances in scientific research on links between the environment and human health. Dr. Myers holds a doctorate in the biological sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from Reed College. Along with co-authors Dr. Theo Colborn and Dianne Dumanoski, Myers wrote “Our Stolen Future,” a book (1996) that explores the scientific basis of concern for how contamination threatens fetal development. Dr. Myers is now actively involved in primary research on the impacts of endocrine disruption on human health. He has also served as Board President of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, an association of more than forty foundations supporting work on biodiversity, climate, energy and environmental health and board chair of the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. In 2016 he received a Laureate Award for Outstanding Public Service from The Endocrine Society, the world’s largest association of medical and research professionals specializing in endocrinology. In November 2016 he received along with 11 others, the first “Champion of Environmental Health Research” award from the National Institutes of Health.

Senator Pete Harckham was elected to the New York State Senate in November 2018, and re-elected in 2020 and 2022—the culmination so far of a distinguished career in public service. Currently, he is chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee.Through his two full terms in office, Harckham has become one of the most productive members of the New York State Senate. He worked to make the 2% Property Tax Cap permanent; delivered record aid to education; and addressed the opioid crisis by doubling minimum treatment times and reducing barriers to life saving treatment.Well-regarded as a champion of the environment, Harckham helped pass the toughest climate protection legislation in the nation, and also introduced legislation, later enacted, requiring all new passenger car and truck sales to be zero emission by 2035 and allowing municipalities to build solar canopies and jumpstart community renewable energy projects. Earlier this year, Governor Kathy Hochul placed Harckham’s landmark wetlands legislation protecting Class C streams statewide, which will safeguard fragile drinking water resources, into her proposed 2023 State Budget.

Megan J. Wolff, Ph.D., MPHis a public health historian with an eye to using history to inform policy. After receiving her masters and doctorate in public health from Columbia University, she spent over a decade at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she developed a mental health policy initiative within the Department of Psychiatry. She believes that climate change is the greatest threat to health and well-being in contemporary life, and that overproduction of plastics touches on every phase of the climate fight. She lives with her family in New Paltz, New York.