Beth Rosenberg Is Nominated To Chemical Safety Board

Beth J. Rosenberg, a public health professor, was nominated last week for a five-year term with the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). Rosenberg is currently an assistant professor in the public health program at Tufts University School of Medicine, a position she has held since 1996. If confirmed by the Senate, she will bring the chemical safety board to three members, still two short of a full complement.

Rosenberg has served as a member of the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Scientific Advisory Board from 2000 to 2008. Since 2005, she has been studying the safety systems and health and safety conditions at former U.S. nuclear weapons production sites, according to a White House announcement. She also is a fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Center for Sustainable Production, which works with companies, workers, and communities to develop sustainable products and production.

CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating the root cause of chemical accidents. Increasingly, CSB has considered fatigue, long hours, and other specific working conditions in its investigations, areas that Rosenberg has also included in her research.

Rosenberg received a B.A. in anthropology from Wellesley College, an M.P.H. in health law from Boston University School of Public Health, and a Sc.D. in work environment policy from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

She will fill the position of William B. Wark, who left the board in 2011. In late August, board member John Bresland also retired after serving 10 years, including three years as CSB chair. The longest serving CSB member, Bresland plans to return to his home in West Virginia and will take up a new role as a research fellow for the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M University, College Station.