Chair, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine Director, Center for Children’s Health and the Environment Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY

Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc. is a pediatrician and the Ethel H. Wise Professor and Chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He holds a Professorship in Pediatrics at Mount Sinai. He directs the Mount Sinai Center for Children’s Health and the Environment.

Dr. Landrigan obtained his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School in 1967. He interned at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital. He completed a residency in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. He obtained a Master of Science in occupational medicine and a Diploma of Industrial Health from the University of London.

From 1970 to 1985, Dr. Landrigan served as a commissioned officer in the United States Public Health Service. He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and then as a medical epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. While with CDC, Dr. Landrigan served for one year as a field epidemiologist in El Salvador and for another year in northern Nigeria.

Dr. Landrigan was the co-founder and from 1971 to 1977 the medical co-director of the Beacon Hill Community Clinic, a medical center established in partnership with community residents in Decatur, Georgia.

Dr. Landrigan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and previously was Editor of Environmental Research. He has chaired committees at the National Academy of Sciences on Environmental Neurotoxicology and on Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. Dr. Landrigan’s report on pesticides and children’s health was instrumental in securing passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the major federal pesticide law in the United States.

In New York City, he served on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee to prevent Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning and on the Childhood Immunization Advisory Committee. From 1995 to 1997, Dr. Landrigan served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran’s Illnesses.

In 1997 and 1998, Dr. Landrigan served as Senior Advisor on Children’s Health to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He was responsible at EPA for helping to establish a new Office of Children’s Health Protection. Dr. Landrigan has been involved since 1999 in development of the National Children’s Study, a major prospective epidemiological study that will follow 100,000 American children from conception to age 21 years in order to identify preventable environmental causes of disease and developmental dysfunction. Dr. Landrigan is a retired Captain in the Medical Corps of the United States Navy.

Created 10-15-07