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The Environmental Answer Man
by Maryann Brinley

The episodes of Michael Gochfeld's life as an environmental medical detective for more than four decades read like a best-selling novel - the kind you can't put down even at midnight.

Stories from the professional road he's taken in occupational medicine, environmental toxicology and risk assessment, place him heroically in a series of unfolding, and often convoluted, dramas.

Back in Vietnam, he served as a public health advisor in the mid 1960s, combating plague and cholera as well as treating wounded and burned civilians, an experience which made him perfect for grappling with the effects of Agent Orange and dioxin on Vietnam veterans. Now on Amchitka Island in the Alaskan Aleutians, he is currently studying the "possible contamination of the marine environment from three underground nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. more than 30 years ago." No matter where he is, this scientist could easily be the answer to that question asked by officials during any environmental disaster: Who are you going to call?

Indeed, calls do come in from doctors, lawyers, companies, governmental agencies and patients themselves about rashes, asthma, metals, molds, radiation, bugs, arsenic and asbestos. Michael Gochfeld, MD, PhD, and four EOHSI colleagues even arrived at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan just a few days after 9/11 to help sort out that human and toxic terrorist nightmare for the City of New York.

A professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), he acknowledges that his research on recognizing and preventing chemical, physical and biological hazards, and exposure to these compounds in air, soil, water and the food chain, "has been exciting. People spend their lives basically in three environments: home, community and workplace or school. Our work at EOHSI focuses on all three," he says. He has conducted numerous studies on heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, chromium and dioxin as well as on noise pollution. His search for ecological bio-indicators that might forewarn of environmental contaminants has also given him scientific creative license to explore birds on all continents. In addition, he has concentrated on the neuro-developmental effects of toxins, a research area critically important as medicine confronts an increase in behavioral abnormalities and learning disorders in children. Over the years, EOHSI and Gochfeld have developed "worldwide partnerships while learning and teaching in many countries."Dividing his time between research, clinical service and teaching, Gochfeld also directs one of only 40 residency programs nationwide in occupational/environmental medicine.

In Alaska last summer, Gochfeld worked under his wife of 23 years and longtime collaborator, Rutgers University professor Joanna Burger, who is also his co-author on two books, Twenty Five Nature Spectacles in New Jersey and Butterflies of New Jersey. "This partnership," he says, "has provided the opportunity to discuss, plan, collect and interpret and thanks to Joanna's prolific writing ability, to publish many scientific studies. We've been particularly interested in analogies between toxicological effects in humans and animals, and how these can be used as early warnings of environmental hazards."

Joanna Burger led the Amchitka biological sampling teams on the expedition conducted by CRESP (Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation). This multi-university group headed by Charles Powers, also of RWJMS, is helping the Department of Energy (DOE) wrestle with the hazardous waste legacy of the Cold War. Gochfeld explains, "The native peoples of the Aleutians, the Department of the Interior, and the state of Alaska have all entrusted CRESP with the task of evaluating the Amchitka ecosystem before the DOE terminates its responsibility." For five weeks, they labored with native hunters and fishermen in the most physically exhausting and mentally challenging work he's ever experienced.

On a recent expedition to Amchitka Island in Alaska, Michael Gochfeld and his wife, Rutgers professor Joanna Burger, explored possible leakage from the largest underground nuclear test (5 megatons) conducted by the U.S. in 1971 a mile below the water's surface.

Gochfeld believes that all aspects of health and healthcare call for an understanding of complex interactions. In truth, nothing ever appears to be simple about this "top doc's" research. Chairing the state of New Jersey's Mercury Task Force was a perfect example of the complexities he faces. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause permanent damage to the brain and kidneys, personality changes, tremors, vision problems, and loss of sensation as well as memory. This heavy metal evaporates easily, travels long distances, ends up in soil and water, and accumulates in fish tissue. Gochfeld tracked the pathway from mid-western coal-fired power plants to the mercury in New Jersey's fish. The detective work required several disciplines and months of effort.

Mercury contamination, in fact, was a subject he encountered back in the 70s. The memory is emotionally painful. "I was consulting with a factory which made mercurial pesticides," he recalls. "I urged the company to reduce worker exposure by improving industrial controls. Instead the company bulldozed the plant and sold the property, leaving behind the largest mercury contamination site in the state." Located in Bergen County, this Berry's Creek superfund site is estimated to be contaminated with 268 tons of toxic waste, mostly mercury. The concentration of mercury is probably the highest of any fresh water system in the world, a dubious distinction for New Jersey.

Berry's Creek, a nearly unsolvable puzzle, is one of those complex cases scientists like Gochfeld contemplate nowadays. "Overall, the greatest environmental health problems are now related to overpopulation, too many people in too few places.

The growing population seeking a suburban life has put great pressure on our infrastructure, while in developing countries, there are too many people chasing too few resources." In urban areas where land is scarce, the ability to make rational use of former industrial sites, which are heavily contaminated, is vital. "What happens when the cost of cleanup exceeds any conceivable value of land?" he asks in typically scientificphilosopher fashion. What might be done with sites that can only be cleaned up in part?

Back in the 1960s, when he was a young doctor, Gochfeld considered himself a specialist in occupational medicine, "which was basically industrial medicine in our heavily industrialized state." Some of his most rewarding experiences were those occasions when he "catalyzed agreements between labor and management on work safety." The workplace environment changed, however.

In the 1980s, his professional concerns shifted to absorb the public's worries about toxic waste, water and air pollution. At that time, "the annual Eagleton Poll consistently showed that environmental quality was the number one public policy concern in New Jersey, ahead of jobs and violence.

"Today," he says, "environmental concerns still rank high but they are more complex. We are fighting to maintain open space and limit sprawl."

Like the wise hero who turns easily and quickly to face a new set of problems and a new episode, Gochfeld can envision a practical use for Berry's Creek, an environmental disaster too expensive to clean up entirely and yet too close to a major metropolis to place off limits to the public. "I've encouraged the state to turn the site into a museum, to remind future generations of the hazardous waste problems we grappled with."

Albert Einstein once stated that in science, "there is no logical path - just intuition, based upon something like an intellectual love of the objects of experience." For Michael Gochfeld, that path is still turning corners into new episodes. Up until their recent Alaskan adventure, he and his wife Joanna had confined their work to land. He laughs, "Our recent collaboration with Arctic divers suggests that we need to spend more time exploring under the water's surface - maybe in my next lifetime."