TEDX The Endocrine Disruption Exchange 211 Grand Avenue, Suite 114 P.O. Box 1407 Paonia, CO 81428 Phone & Fax: 970-527-4082
[email protected] October 25, 2007 Written testimony of Theo Colborn, PhD, President of TEDX, Paonia, Colorado before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, hearing on The Applicability of Federal Requirements to Protect Public Health and the Environment from Oil and Gas Development, October 31, 2007. Good morning Mr. Waxman and members of the Committee. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about the emerging public health and environmental issues as a result of natural gas production in the west. My name is Theo Colborn. I am here to speak as an environmental health analyst and as a resident of western Colorado whose watershed and air are being threatened by natural gas production and delivery. I have a B.S. in pharmacy from Rutgers University, an M.A. in fresh water ecology from Western State College of Colorado, and a PhD in zoology, with distributed minors in epidemiology, toxicology, and water chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. My field and laboratory research for these degrees looked at the mobilization of low levels of toxic trace metals in high altitude streams in Colorado. In 1985 I moved to Washington DC on a Fellowship from the US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment and later established and ran the Wildlife and Contaminants Program at World Wildlife Fund until 2002. I have served on the EPA Science Advisory Board and several EPA panels; on a Canada/US International Joint Commission Health Committee since 1989; advised Environment Canada, Health Canada, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Department of the Interior, the ATSDR; and advised similar government agencies in Europe, the UK, and Japan.