Robin Dodson

Robin Dodson is a Research Scientist at Silent Spring Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches the links between the environment and women's health, especially breast cancer.  Her expertise is in exposure assessment and indoor air pollution. She is currently working on developing innovative exposure assessment methods for cohort studies and intervention studies aimed at reducing indoor pollution.  

Dr. Dodson completed her doctorate in environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health where she designed and conducted an exposure study in the Boston area focusing on residential and personal exposures to volatile organic compounds, such as chloroform from heated tap water, benzene from attached garages, and formaldehyde from home furnishings. She developed models to evaluate the potential impacts of chemicals on residential exposure in secondary areas, such as basements, attached garages, and apartment hallways. She also developed a personal exposure model based on time-weighted microenvironmental concentrations to determine how people are exposed to volatile organic compounds. In addition, she evaluated methods for leveraging existing residential concentration data to model residential concentrations for potential study populations. As a graduate student, she also contributed to two studies focusing on asthma in lower-socioeconomic-status urban residences in the Boston area.

Prior to her graduate work, Dr. Dodson worked at Menzie-Cura and Associates, where she contributed to both human and ecological risk assessments. In addition to her doctorate, Dr. Dodson holds a bachelor’s in environmental studies from Bates College and a master’s in environmental science and risk management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Dodson was nominated for the SAB by the Toxics Use Reduction Institute