Toxic award? Harvard's School of Public Health (HSPH) has stirred controversy by awarding its top honor to celebrity activist Erin Brockovich-Ellis (below). As a file clerk at a law firm, Brockovich-Ellis uncovered a case of industrial pollution that led to a $333 million settlement in 1996 and inspired an eponymous Hollywood blockbuster. But critics say the award endorses a "symbol of junk science."
CREDIT: ERIN BROKOVICH-ELLIS
Facilities owned by Pacific Gas and Electric leaked the carcinogen chromium-6 into drinking water for decades. In an invitation to the 18 October awards ceremony, HSPH Dean Barry Bloom lauded Brockovich "for her efforts on behalf of all of us, and especially the residents of Hinkley, California, whose health was adversely affected by toxic substances dumped by a utility company."
But Harvard physicist Richard Wilson, who has studied arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh, objects: "If you have the dean saying that this harmed the residents of Hinkley, that's false." And Elizabeth Whelan, an HSPH alumnus and president of the American Council on Science and Health, who is boycotting the ceremony, says there's no evidence that ingesting chromium-6 causes cancer.
Brockovich gets an endorsement from Lynn Goldman of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, however, who points out that chromium-6 can be carcinogenic when inhaled, say from water vapors.
