Much of the Lowell Center’s work focuses on remedying the litany of environmental and public health harms caused by the 20th century technology revolution in synthetic organic chemistry. These innovations in science and technology generated tens of thousands of chemicals that proliferated without attention to public health and environmental impacts despite early warnings of harm.
Yet are we destined to repeat the same mistakes with other emerging technologies? Channeling technological development down healthy rather than unhealthy paths requires integrating public health and environmental impacts into technology design as well as policy and business decisions. The Lowell Center is engaged in two areas of emerging health threats: