Charles Levenstein

Charles Levenstein, Ph.D., M.Sc., is an economist and policy analyst -- and a poet. He has published four collections of poems: Lost Baggage, Poems of World War II, Animal Vegetable and The Ponderous Galapagos Turtle. He was a contributing editor to Poems Niederngasse, a now defunct e-magazine published in Switzerland. And he has published widely in internet-based poetry zines.

He is also Professor Emeritus of Work Environment at UMass Lowell, retiring from teaching in 2003. He is adjunct professor of occupational health at Tufts University School of Medicine and one of the leading researchers concerned with social factors in occupational and environmental health. For several years he was co-director of the Organized Labor and Tobacco Control Consortium, funded by the American Legacy Foundation at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He subsequently became a consultant to Dr. Edith Balbach’s NCI-funded research on tobacco industry relations with trade unions. He has served as member and chair of the environmental health and safety committee of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. He has been engaged in intervention research in immigrant communities and in the economic evaluation of occupational health and safety interventions. Until recently, Dr Levenstein chaired the advisory committee for United Steel Workers Federally-funded health and safety projects, as well as chairing the advisory board of The New England Consortium, an NIEHS-funded collaboration of health and safety advocacy groups, trade unions and academics. In his most recent edited book, he reports (with Madeleine Scammell) on THE TOXIC SCHOOLHOUSE. His previous book explored industrial relations systems analysis as an approach to understanding social factors in occupational and environmental health. In his 2002 book (with Greg deLaurier and Mary Lee Dunn), THE COTTON DUST PAPERS (2002), he examines the 50-year struggle for recognition of byssinosis (“brown lung”) in the U.S. Dr. Levenstein served on the IOM/NAS Committee on Health and Safety Needs of Older Workers. He is Editor Emeritus of New Solutions, a quarterly peer-reviewed journal of occupational and environmental health policy and is co-editor of the Routledge book series on Work, Health and Environment. Prof. Levenstein is a recipient of the American Public Health Association’s award for lifetime contribution to occupational health