Prof. Dr. Marianne Sullivan

Marianne Sullivan is an associate professor of public health at William Paterson University in New Jersey, USA. She is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in understanding the causes of environmental health problems, how environmental health problems are framed, and why some environmental health problems are addressed through public policy and public health efforts, while others are not. She received her doctorate in public health from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. Her book, Tainted Earth: Smelters, Public Health and the Environment was published in 2014 by Rutgers University Press. It explores the history of toxic metal exposure/poisoning and environmental devastation caused by lead and copper smelting in the US. Subsequent work has focused on children’s health near other nonferrous smelters. She is an active member of the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), a group of international researchers working to document the impact of the Trump Administration on US environmental policy.

RCC Research Project: A Comparative Study of Preventing Childhood Lead Exposure in Germany and the United States

Selected Publications:

• with Lindsey Dillon, Christopher Sellers, Vivian Underhill, Nicholas Shapiro, Jennifer Liss Ohayon, Phil Brown et al. “The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Days of the Trump Administration: Prelude to Regulatory Capture.” American Journal of Public Health 108, no.2 (2018): 89–94.
• with Donna Green and Karrina Nolan. “Environmental Injustice in Resource-Rich Aboriginal Australia.” In Handbook of Environmental Justice, edited by Ryan Holifield, Jayajit Chakraborty, and Gordon Walker, 515–27. New York: Routledge, 2018.
• “Hamilton and Hardy: Mentoring and Friendship in the Service of Occupational Health.” Public Health Reports 132, no. 5 (2017): 539–44.
• with Donna Green. “Misled about Lead: An Assessment of Online Public Health Education Material from Australia’s Lead Mining and Smelting Towns.” Environmental Health 15, no. 1 (January 2016): 1–12.
• “More Evidence of Unpublished Industry Studies of Lead Smelter/Refinery Workers.” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 21, no. 4 (2015): 308–13.
• Tainted Earth: Smelters, Public Health and the Environment. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014.