John Vena, professor of social and preventive medicine, is co-director of the Environment and Society Institute (ESI). His epidemiologic research has focused primarily on risk of cancer and adverse reproductive outcomes associated with environmental pollutants and occupational health hazards.

What is the mission of ESI

There was a task force that I was part of back in '95 and '96 that tried to look at what was happening with environmental studies, environmental issues, and how the university was responding to it, administratively, academically, etc. The task force, a really interdisciplinary group, came to the consensus that we needed an overarching institute that could be the focal point for organization of research, education and community service with regard to the environment. The institute was established to provide that mechanism where interdisciplinary teams of faculty could be used to address and set agenda for environmental considerations.

How many faculty are affiliated with the institute?

There are more than 200 faculty with interests with regard to the environment. If you think about that diversity of talent that we have at the university, it's a real strength. Not only do we have affiliated faculty, we also have affiliated centers of excellence that can be used to address both education and research with regard to the environment. Examples include the Toxicology Research Center in the school of medicine, the hazardous waste center in Engineering, the Great Lakes Program, the university's center for Geographic Information and Analysis in Geography.

What is the Environmental Management Alternatives Program (EMAP) and what kinds of projects are funded through it?

The steering committee's intent is to try to facilitate interdisciplinary research by bringing together different academic disciplines that can focus on assessing and developing approaches to regional environmental problems. EMAP makes available seed funding of up to $20,000 for research projects that pair interdisciplinary academic working groups with community stakeholder groups. Of the ones that have been funded, two have dealt with local environmental health issues or problems: one with developing a groundwater model and assessment for a community, another one had to do with a health assessment in a community impacted by a toxic-waste site. Others have had a more overarching kind of development of regional perspectives. One that is currently under way is looking at environmental monitoring and stewardship as a follow-up to the State of the Region report. The follow-up was to better delineate what are some of the environmental indicators that we need to begin developing so we can have better environmental stewardship in the region. Another project that has implications for regional development and planning is the brownfields redevelopment project. That was a nice, interdisciplinary group from Law, Civil Engineering and Planning that actually looked at developing a mechanism for redeveloping the brownfields in Buffalo.

What other types of work is ESI involved in?

ESI also is involved in assessing the educational needs of the university-where are we at the university with regard to graduate and undergraduate education. We have a training program where we provide top-off fellowships for the recruitment of students, a competitive graduate stipend to bring students here. ESI has been involved in the planning of an Environmental Health Center to develop a research and education agenda for environmental health. The institute also is working on better articulating and organizing a community environmental task force or advocacy network where we can use ESI to organize, on an ad hoc basis, interdisciplinary working groups to address specific environmental health concerns or issues, as well as things that come up in the community. One example from this past year is the institute's work to assist the Environmental Protection Agency and community groups in Middleport with regard to remediation efforts at the FMC plant where there is arsenic contamination in the soil. One of the issues was, what are background levels that should be used in the risk assessment and how to quantify the background levels appropriately. The institute had a group that worked with the EPA to help design a background level study. We also commented on the remediation plan. The value of ESI was that we could have people in each of the critical areas of evaluation-regulation, soil, geology, chemistry, environmental engineering, public health, toxicology. You had people there around the table ... people who are experts.

Why are the debates on environmental issues (pesticide use, effects of pollution on wildlife, etc.) so acrimonious, even among private citizens?

The whole area of risk assessment and communication, and taking the science and trying to translate it into good public policy and decision-making is difficult. But that's where the institute again can provide that interface, where, in fact, policy makers, regulators and decision-makers can be educated with regard to what the issues are so that the best decisions can be made. And the issue isn't when people realize that good decisions are not being made and people are imposing risks upon them that are not voluntary, then the perception is that they are being harmed. They might not be getting harmed, but the perception is that they're getting harmed. So there's a whole risk-perception field where people have looked at how people respond to these sorts of things. Whether it's voluntary versus involuntary, whether something is known or unknown. You can tell someone that their risk if they smoke cigarettes is 100 times more than somebody else, they'll say they know that and that's their choice. But if the risk of living in a neighborhood where there's an air pollutant coming across my fence, somebody else is doing that to me and I don't want that to happen to me. It's a completely different perception based on the risk and how it's being managed and communicated to people. Sometimes there's a disconnect between the community and the information they need to be able to assess the risk and who's managing it. I think that overall, there's been a lack of mechanism for communities to be more involved in the process.

How has your personal philosophy about how you interact with the environment developed based on the things you have discovered in your research?

I've come to realize more and more the necessity to have more of an eco-system approach to all the different dimensions of the environment. Sometimes you can't be so focused on the very specific issue because lots of times there's a broader issue or problem that impacts that specific problem that you're trying to solve. It really helps to try to put into context what you're doing into a broader ecosystem.

Do you consider yourself an environmentalist?

Absolutely. People always ask, 'where do you draw the line between being a scientist and what's your role in communicating your results and how much should you be an advocate?' My view is that I have to be an advocate for my science and I have to communicate it, not only to my colleagues in my own field, but also to the general scientific community. I also have an obligation to communicate back to the communities and the populations that are impacted. And I also have to educate and communicate the findings to the policy makers, regulators and others who need to understand how the science relates to what they do. Should I be an advocate? Absolutely. No doubt.