Robert Duff brings a passion to his work as head of the Washington State Department of Health team that assesses human exposure to environmental contaminants.

His team of toxicologists, epidemiologists, risk assessors, health educators, and other specialists investigates contaminants in fish, soil, and drinking water, and is becoming increasingly involved with air toxics. They provide guidance to the Health Department and other regulatory agencies.

Duff says he has found a job that is an ideal fit because he doesn’t want to be boxed into a “bureaucratic rut of meeting statutory mandates, without the opportunity to provide some advocacy on emerging issues in environmental health.” He relishes the opportunity to provide leadership on emerging issues.

For example, his unit is involved with the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Persistent, Bioaccumulative Toxins Initiative that concerns health impacts of PBTs such mercury and PDBE flame retardants (see page 18). Duff is also excited about implementing forward-looking programs such as an Environmental Public Health Tracking grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that lays the groundwork for states to begin tracking environmentally related disease.

At the same time, the Washington State Health Department addresses important issues associated with human exposure to environmental contaminants at Superfund sites. Facilitated by the health department’s long-standing cooperative agreement with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, these site-specific exposures are addressed under both federal and state law with a recognition that many communities living near hazardous waste sites share an unequal burden of exposure.

After getting his MS in 1993, Duff’s first job was with the New Hampshire Division of Public Health Services. When his wife finished her graduate studies back East, the couple toured Europe, then returned to Washington. Robert decided to do a second tour in Dr. John Kissel’s lab at the UW.

That experience led him to jobs with the Washington State Department of Health as a public health assessor and a toxicologist, and eventually into management positions with the Site Assessment Section and the Office of Environment Health Assessments.

He says his UW coursework in toxicology and risk assessment gave him an advantage over other professionals who lacked this expertise. He urges graduate students to carefully select their thesis topic; his focus on exposure assessment made it easy for him to move into the workplace.

He advises graduates to seek opportunities, in their first job, to look forward and press the issues of the day. “Prevention is certainly a key to environmental health but it does not require that we be passive,” Duff says. “It is up to us to wade through hype and fear and find the real emerging environmental health threats.”

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