Jerome Nriagu
Jerome Nriagu
Dr. Jerome Nriagu is a widely recognized expert in biogeochemistry and environmental health with over forty years of experience. He is among the most cited researchers in Environment Studies and Ecology and has published 30 books and over 400 scientific articles. He retired from the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, where his research focused on environmental health, environmental pollutants (especially toxic metals), and environmental justice.
"I am sometimes asked if I have experienced discrimination in my profession. There have been many occasions when I have been criticized, called all sorts of names, and have even received death threats. As a strong environmental advocate, many people do not like what I have to say or the positions that I have taken on important environmental issues – unprofessional rudeness is rather common in my highly polarized field of study, which deals with the risks and effects of toxic metals in various environmental media. I just let the higher principle which says that "excellence is the antidote to nepotism, racism and sexism" guide my efforts in research, teaching and professional activities throughout my career" - Dr. Jerome Nriagu, Convocation Speech, University of Alberta, Edmonton,1987
Abdulai, P. M., Sam, K., Onyena, A. P., ... Nriagu, J., & Orisakwe, O. E., 2024. Persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals in Ghanaian environment: a systematic review of food safety implications, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 196(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-024-12500-w
Guan, D-X., Yang, C., & Nriagu, J., 2024. Editorial: The role of essential trace elements in health and disease, Frontiers in Public Health. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1285603
Nriagu, J., 2023. Sixty years since the report of the global lead pollution, Nature, 619(7971). https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02196-2
Han, R., Wang, Z., Wang, S., ... Nriagu, J., Teng, H. H., & Li, G., 2023. A combined strategy to mitigate the accumulation of arsenic and cadmium in rice (Oryza sativa L.), The Science of the Total Environment, 896(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.165226
Bede, O., Nnamah, N.K., Onuegbu, J., ... Nriagu, J., 2023. Cadmium exposure and the risk of prostate cancer among Nigerian men: Effect modification by zinc status, Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology, 78(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtemb.2023.127168
Chakraborty, A., Ghosh, S., Biswas, B., Pramanik, S., Nriagu, J., Bhowmick, S., 2022. Epigenetic modifications from arsenic exposure: A comprehensive review. Science of the Total Environment, 810 (151218).
Biswas, B., Chakraborty, A., Chatterjee, D., Pramanik, S., Ganguli, B., Majumdar, K.K., Nriagu, J., Kulkarni, K.Y., Bansiwal, A., Labhasetwar, P., Bhowmick, S., 2021. Arsenic exposure from drinking water and staple food (rice): A field scale study in rural Bengal for assessment of human health risk. Ecotoxicology & Environmental Safety, 228 (113012)
Dr. Nriagu came from a low-income family in Eastern Nigeria. His parents were subsistence farmers who did not finish elementary school. He had no chance of attending school but for government scholarships. He attended Government College, Umuahia (secondary school), followed by the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (BSc Honors degree in 1965), the University of Wisconsin, Madison (MS in 1967), and the University of Toronto (PhD in 1970). The 1960s marked the dawn of environmental studies as a distinct academic discipline. Without a defined curriculum and graduate programs on “environment,” Dr. Nriagu’s research training came from “low-temperature geochemistry.” It benefitted from exposure to the strong program in chemical limnology at the University of Wisconsin (under Professors G.Fred Lee and Carl Bowser) and the pioneering program on thermodynamics of trace metals in hydrothermal systems at the University of Toronto (under Professor Gregor M. Anderson). The training gave him the strong scientific fundamentals needed to effectively transition into the multidisciplinary field of “science of the environment.” Years later, Dr. Nriagu earned the first meritorious Doctor of Science (DSc) degree ever awarded by the University of Ibadan (in 1987) and probably the first in environmental biogeochemistry. Dr. Nriagu initially came to the US with a big dream of acquiring an education that could make him rich in the oil business (a sure way to be somebody in Nigeria). Instead, he ended up as an environmental scientist through research training opportunities rather than by divine inspiration.
After his Ph.D., Nriagu joined the National Water Research Institute (now defunct) of the Federal Canadian Department of the Environment in Burlington, Ontario, as a Research Scientist in 1972. His first job was to study the sources, fate, and effects of toxic metals in the North American Great Lakes, which were claimed to be dying at the time. The research was subsequently broadened to include soft-water lakes in Canada, which were severely impacted by acid rain. While with Environment Canada, he served as an Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Earth Sciences (1985-1995) and Biology (2000-2005) at the University of Waterloo. In 1993, he moved to the United States to join the University of Michigan's School of Public Health as a Professor of Environmental Chemistry in the Department of Environmental & Industrial Health. With this appointment, his research shifted to environmental health sciences with an emphasis on the characterization, assessment, and management of the health risks of trace metals and other pollutants in various environmental media. He served as the Director of the Environmental Health Program in the department for over a decade. He had a parallel appointment as Research Professor at the Center for Human Growth & Development, where he served as the Director of the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Training Program (MHRT), which offered research training opportunities at foreign sites to undergraduate and graduate students from health disparity backgrounds. He remains a Faculty Associate at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the university. Dr. Nriagu's courses included Environmental Chemistry, Water Quality, Food Contaminants, Environmental Health in Developing Countries, and Environmental Justice from the risk science perspective. He retired as Professor Emeritus in the School of Public Health in 2013.
Dr. Nriagu is very productive in research, having 30 books and over 400 scientific articles (14 in the prestigious Nature or Science journal). His work has been cited over 41,000 times (according to Google Scholar), making him one of the top-ranked researchers in environmental studies and environmental health sciences. He served as Editor and then Editor-in-Chief of the Science of the Total Environment, a leading journal in his field for over 20 years; was Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Environmental Science & Technology, a book series and; the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Health (in 6 volumes). Dr. Nriagu made significant contributions to generating scientific knowledge and communicating the science of his field.
Dr. Nriagu has served as a member of Boards and important committees that could influence national environmental policies including Science Advisory Board of the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH); Board of Directors, Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, Washington, D.C; and Board of Directors, International Center for Environmental & Nuclear Sciences, Kingston, Jamaica. He has also served on the Board of Directors of several non-government organizations (NGOs) and helped to shape their science agenda. He served on advisory panels of many agencies and international organizations, including the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the World Bank, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the World Health Organization, the United Nations University Scientific Programs for Training Centers, and the US National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Nriagu has received several accolades. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1992). He received its prestigious Miroslaw Romanowski Medal (1999) for outstanding contributions to the study of trace elements in aquatic ecosystems of Canada. He has received a Fulbright Senior Fellowship at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica (2002); the Alexander von Humboldt Distinguished Research Award at the University of Heidelberg (2009); Frank Rigler Medal of the Canadian Society of Limnologists (1988); Outstanding Research Award, School of Public Health, University of Michigan (2004); and Distinguished Alumni Award, University of Ibadan (2013). Dr. Nriagu was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) degree by the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2016.
Dr. Nriagu is especially delighted to mentor students. Over the years, he chaired or served on doctoral committees of over 30 students and was an academic mentor for more than 50 MPH and MS students. Some of his students are now in leadership positions in educational and research institutes in many parts of the world. He offered training courses in Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Taiwan, Italy (Siena), and France (Grenoble). He has researched and collaborated with scientists in Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, India, China, Mongolia, Taiwan, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Jamaica, and Brazil. In his collaborative engagements at home and abroad, Dr. Nriagu did not hesitate to provide mentoring as needed. Many of Dr. Nriagu's papers have his students and collaborators as first authors, which reflects the quality of mentoring in his laboratory.
For over 10 years, Dr. Nriagu mentored many minority students under the MHRT Program at the University of Michigan. With the research exposure and foreign experience, the program became an essential pipeline for many minority students into biomedical and/or behavioral health research careers.
If you are born poor in a small village in eastern Nigeria, you don't have ladders to climb or elevators to take to success. You learn early to use your wits to overcome not only the ups and downs but also the zigs and zags in life. You learn to look sideways, backward, and around the corner for survival and opportunities. My career path is not traditional, but I have managed to overcome a lot of handicaps and defy considerable odds. It has also benefitted from a few breaks, such as getting a job as a Research Scientists in Environment Canada (when the federal government was pumping lots of money into environmental research) and being recruited to the faculty of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan (which gave me access to top-notch research infrastructure and outstanding students). I consider myself a living example that with hard work, dedication, focus, persistence, and a little luck, one can have a successful and rewarding career in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields regardless of Faculty Associate at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the university.
Jerome Nriagu, PhD, DSc. (n.d.). University of Michigan School of Public Health. Retrieved June 19, 2024 from https://sph.umich.edu/faculty-profiles/nriagu-jerome.html
Jerome Nriagu, PhD, DSc. [Photo] (n.d.). University of Michigan School of Public Health. Retrieved June 19, 2024 from https://sph.umich.edu/faculty-profiles/nriagu-jerome.html
Jerome Nriagu. (2024). Wikipedia. Retrieved June 19, 2024 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Nriagu
(JEDSI) Survey and interviews conducted by Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Sustainability Initiative staff. 2022-2024. Yale University-School of the Environment. New Haven, Connecticut.