David Rosner (born March 13, 1947) is the Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and professor of history in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. He is also co-director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine in 2010.[1]
Influential work
Rosner's work has been influential in a number of international legislative and legal decisions regarding industrial safety and health, health policy and race relations. The 2005 edition of his book, Deadly Dust, co-authored with Gerald Markowitz, was one of the major stimuli of a five-year, international study of mining and health standards through collaboration with the Agence National Francais, the French equivalent of the National Science Foundation.[citation needed]
This collaboration brings together experts from countries around the world to discuss the variety of historical factors that have shaped international policies regarding silicosis, a deadly lung disease affecting workers in a host of industries. In its earlier 1991 edition, this book led to the bringing together of over 600 public health, industry and governmental experts from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Mining Safety and Health Administration and elsewhere in a National Conference on Silicosis in Washington. This conference led the Robert Reich, the US Secretary of Labor, to identify silicosis as a disease that should be eliminated in the coming years and the banning of certain dangerous practices in a variety of industries.[citation needed]
In addition, he has been a consultant and expert witness in lead poisoning cases, on behalf of the State of Rhode Island in its landmark suit against the lead pigment industry and individual plaintiffs injured by lead from paint on the walls of the nation's housing.[2][3] Later again he also appeared in the California lead paint trial.[4][5]
With Gerald Markowitz, Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York, and support from the National Science Foundation, he authored the book: Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children, (Berkeley: University of California Press/Milbank Fund, 2013) which includes tracing the implications of lowered blood lead levels on public health research and practice.[6]
Toxic Docs
Toxic Docs which reveals documents which support the story of the ongoing effort of the Lead Industries Association, the Tobacco industry and other propaganda organizations of industry to discredit public health concerns so they can continue to pollute and profit from dangerous products was also produced with Markowitz and also Merlin Chowkwanyun.[7][8][9][10] Toxic Docs originated when Merlin Chowkwanyun assisted Rosner with creating a response to a criticism of two chapters in book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution by publishing the chapters online along with the original source documents as citations and later expanded that technique into Toxic Docs.[11]
He is a member of the International Silicosis Project, a project organized through the French government and Sciences Po on the international comparison of an occupational disease, silicosis. In 2008, he was a fellow at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. In the past, he has participated in an IREX program on Eastern Europe.[25]
Honors
In addition to numerous grants, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Investigator Award, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and a Josiah Macy Fellow. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2010. He has been awarded the Distinguished Scholar's Prize from the City University, the Viseltear Prize for Outstanding Work in the History of Public Health from the APHA and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Massachusetts. He has also been honored at the Awards Dinner of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health and he and Gerald Markowitz have been awarded the Upton Sinclair Memorial Lectureship “For Outstanding Occupational Health, Safety, and Environmental Journalism by the American Industrial Hygiene Association.”[26]
^"A Surprise Environmental Health Victory at the U.S. Supreme Court". Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Columbia University. October 22, 2018. Retrieved March 11, 2021. As the case proceeded, Rosner and Markowitz were each on the stand for the better part of three days.
^Jasen, Georgette (March 16, 2014). "Exposing the Hazards of Lead Poisoning". Columbia News. Columbia University. Retrieved March 11, 2021. A California judge has called David Rosner "the people's historian."
^"Pulling Back the Curtain on Industrial Toxins". Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Columbia University. February 7, 2018. Retrieved March 12, 2021. "A single document by itself doesn't tell the whole story," says Chowkwanyun. "ToxicDocs connects the dots. This larger dataset paints a much bigger picture."
^Shine, Gautam (2017). "Document analysis and classification for the ToxicDocs collection". GitHub. Retrieved March 15, 2021. A common narrative is that a toxic substance was known to be harmful to the chemical industry well before it's exposed as such and gets banned by government agencies.
^Root, Tik (January 10, 2018). "In ToxicDocs.org, a Treasure Trove of Industry Secrets". Undark Magazine. Knight Science Journalism. Retrieved April 9, 2021. with Chowkwanyun, they started by creating a website and uploading the maligned chapters of "Deceit and Denial," with each footnote linked to the original supporting documents in their entirety. ... Since then, Chowkwanyun has expanded that early effort into what is now called ToxicDocs.org