White Plains, NY, October 21, 2002 - Pace Law School Professor, Linda C. Fentiman, has been appointed for a one-year term to the Committee on Emerging Issues and Data on Environmental Contaminants recently established by the National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology (BEST). This newly established Committee will provide a public forum for communication among government, industry, environmental groups, and the academic community about emerging evidence and issues in environmental toxicology, risk assessment, exposure assessments, toxicogenomics, and other related fields.

The National Research Council, which is the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, was organized in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of further knowledge and advising the federal government. The mission of The National Research Council’s Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology is to provide independent expert assistance to the federal government and advice to the Nation on matters of science and technology affecting public policy on important environmental and ecological problems.

Professor Fentiman is the second Pace Law School faculty member now serving on a major National Academy of Science panel. Professor Ann Powers has served as a member of BEST, which established the Emerging Issues Committee, since her appointment to the Board in 2000. Her work with BEST has focused particularly on applied ecology and resource management.

Recent BEST reports received widespread notice include Arsenic in Drinking Water, which addressed standards established by EPA for public drinking water supplies; Estimating the Public Health Benefits of Proposed Air Pollution Regulations, which reviewed recent EPA analyses and provided recommendations for improvement of the methods used; Compensating for Wetland Losses Under the Clean Water Act; and Strengthening Science at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Other studies currently underway include an examination of the scientific information available on the cumulative environmental effects of oil and gas production on Alaska’s North Slope.

Professor Fentiman writes and teaches in the areas of health law, criminal law, and mental disability law, focusing on issues of expanding access to health care, bioethics, public health, and mental disability issues in criminal trials. In addition to her background as a criminal lawyer and health care lawyer, she served as an attorney in the General Counsel's Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. from 1980-1982, focusing on legal and public health issues involved in the use of pesticides.

Founded in 1976, Pace Law School is located in White Plains, N.Y., 20 miles north of New York City. The School offers the J.D. program for full-time, and part-time day, and evening students. Its post-graduate program includes the LL.M. and S.J.D. degrees in Environmental Law and an LL.M. in Comparative Legal Studies. Pace has one of the nation's top-rated environmental law programs and its Clinical Education Program also is nationally ranked, offering clinics in domestic violence prosecution, securities arbitration, criminal justice, and disability rights.