Michael Rabinowitz
Dr. Michael Rabinowitz is a geochemist with over 20 years of experience with lead. He holds an S.B. in Physics (1968) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an M.S. in Planetary Sciences (1970) from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Ph.D. in Geochemistry (1975) from UCLA. From 1974-1975, he was a NIEHS Post-Doctoral Fellow in Nephrology at the UCLA-Wadsworth VA Hospital. His current positions are: Clinical Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Library Reader, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole; and Assistant Dockmaster, Herreshoff Maritime Museum. Dr. Rabinowitz conducted several pioneering research projects on the environmental sources and pathways of lead contamination and the movement of lead within human body compartments by feeding stable isotope tracers to adult human volunteers in a metabolic balance ward. He is familiar with paint, rock, soil, vegetation, air, water, and tissue sampling in urban, rural and remote settings. Dr. Rabinowitz has established several clean-room laboratories for trace lead determinations in Massachusetts and Taiwan. He has experience with statistical analysis and data interpretation, including work on sources of lead to children and lead’s effects on child development, and he is familiar with the factors which influence environmental uptake and absorption of lead. Dr. Rabinowitz has studied the history of the American lead paint industry, visited most of the production sites and analyzed available soil, metal, and paint samples to document this anthropogenic flow of lead. Dr. Rabinowitz has not served on other advisory committees or professional societies. He participated in a U.S. EPA workshop on modeling lead exposure and bioavailability in 1998 and a more recent review of an uptake and distribution model (so-called LEAD5).