Calabrese Receives 2023 Herbert E. Stokinger Award
The award recognizes significant contributions in the broad field of industrial and environmental toxicology.
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The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) has named Professor of Environmental Health Sciences Edward Calabrese as its 2023 Herbert E. Stokinger Award recipient. Calabrese received the award and delivered a keynote lecture during the organization's online awards ceremony on October 18, 2023.
Initiated in 1977, the Herbert E. Stokinger Award recognizes significant contributions in the broad field of industrial and environmental toxicology. The award’s namesake served as Chairman of the Chemical Substances Threshold Limit Values Committee from 1961–1975. Calabrese and past winners comprise a virtual “Who’s Who” in ACGIH and industrial hygiene overall.
"It is both my great honor and great pleasure to receive the 2023 Stokinger Award of the ACGIH," Calabrese said in remarks delivered to the organization. "I greatly appreciate receiving the Stokinger Award since my work in the area of hormesis and the historical foundations of cancer risk assessment have been controversial and very challenging to the field and regulatory agencies."
Calabrese, who was recently rated #3 lifetime in highly ranked scholars in environmental health sciences by ScholarGPS, has researched extensively in the area of host factors affecting susceptibility to pollutants. He was recently featured in a 22-episode documentary video series on the historical foundations of cancer risk assessment commissioned by the Health Physics Society.
Calabrese is the author of over 1,000 papers in scholarly journals, as well as more than 10 books, including Principles of Animal Extrapolation; Nutrition and Environmental Health, Vols. I and II; Ecogenetics; Multiple Chemical Interaction; Air Toxics and Risk Assessment; and Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures to Chemical and Radiation. Along with Mark Mattson (NIH) he is a co-editor of the recently published book entitled Hormesis: A Revolution in Biology, Toxicology and Medicine.
Calabrese has been a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and NATO Countries Safe Drinking Water committees, and on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). He also serves as Chairman of the Biological Effects of Low Level Exposures (BELLE) and as Director of the Northeast Regional Environmental Public Health Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Calabrese was awarded the 2009 Marie Curie Prize for his body of work on hormesis. He is the recipient of the International Society for Cell Communication and Signaling-Springer award for 2010. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from McMaster University in 2013. In 2014 he was awarded the Peter Beckmann Award from Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. He was awarded the G. William Morgan Lectureship Award and the Roberts S. Landauer, Sr., Lectureship Award in 2022 from the Health Physics Society.
Over the past 20 years, Professor Calabrese has redirected his research to understanding the nature of the dose response in the low dose zone and underlying adaptive explanatory mechanisms. Of particular note is that this research has led to important discoveries which indicate that the most fundamental dose response in toxicology and pharmacology is the hormetic-biphasic dose response relationship. These observations are leading to a major transformation in improving drug discovery, development, and in the efficiency of the clinical trial, as well as the scientific foundations for risk assessment and environmental regulation for radiation and chemicals.