Theo Colborn, Ph.D.

President of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange

Theo Colborn, an environmental health analyst, is a Professor of Zoology at the University of Florida, Gainesvillle, and President of TEDX, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, in Paonia, Colorado.  She earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Zoology (distributed minors in epidemiology, toxicology, and water chemistry); an MA in Science at Western State College of Colorado (fresh-water ecology); and a BS in Pharmacy from Rutgers University, College of Pharmacy.
 

Dr. Colborn has served on numerous advisory panels, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board, the Ecosystem Health Committee of the International Joint Commission of the United States and Canada, the Science Management Committee of the Toxic Substances Research Initiative of Canada, the U.S. EPA Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Advisory Committee, and the EPA Endocrine Disruption Methods and Validation Subcommittee. She has published and lectured extensively on the consequences of prenatal exposure to synthetic chemicals by the developing embryo and fetus in wildlife, laboratory animals, and humans. Her work on the result of low-dose and/or ambient exposure effects of endocrine disruptors was popularized in her 1996 book, Our Stolen Future, co-authored with Dianne Dumanoski and J. Peterson Myers now published in eighteen languages.

In 1985, Dr. Colborn received a Fellowship from the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress. From there she joined the Conservation Foundation in 1987 to provide scientific guidance for the 1990 book, Great Lakes, Great Legacy?, in collaboration with the Institute for Research and Public Policy, Ottawa, Canada at the request of the Canada/US International Joint Commission. She held a Chair for three years, starting in 1990, with the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and given a three-year Pew Fellows Award in 1993. Over the years she established and directed the Wildlife and Contaminants Program at World Wildlife Fund US. Among her awards are the: Chatham College Rachel Carson Award, Norwegian International Rachel Carson Prize, United Nations Environment Program Women Leadership for the Environment Award, International Blue Planet Prize, Society of Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry Rachel Carson Award, Center for Science in the Public Interest Rachel Carson Award, Beyond Pesticides Dragonfly Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment.

In her retirement Dr. Colborn set up the non-profit TEDX to carry on the work of providing objective, technical information about endocrine disruption and related low-exposure hazards for academicians, policy makers, government employees, community-based and health support groups, public health authorities, physicians, the news media, and individuals.  Please see TEDX’s website for more information: www.endocrinedisruption.org.