Plastic on Our Minds and in Our Brains

ABOUT THE EVENT

Plastic on Our Minds and in Our Brains: The new science of petrochemical dangers and strategies for safeguarding our children’s health will bring together experts in two panel discussions focusing on exposures to petrochemicals and microplastics through the course of our lives from unexpected exposures to dangerous impacts. The morning will also feature conversations with experts in the plastics and environmental fields.

Confirmed speakers and participants include Mariah Blake, David Michaels, Dr. Ray Dorsey, Dr. Jasmine McDonald, Cynthia Palmer, Lani Wean, Robert Taylor, Tish Taylor, and Martec Washington.

• WHEN Wednesday, March 4, 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM ET
• WHERE National Press Club in Washington, DC, and livestreamed for audiences globally
• WHO Moms, scientists, doctors, frontline community members, and government officials
• WHAT Panel discussions and in-depth conversations illuminating the exposures to petrochemicals and microplastics through the course of our lives

PANELS AND CONVERSATIONS

The event will include two panels — including Unexpected Exposures & Dangerous Impacts, with speakers Dr. Ray Dorsey, Dr. Jasmine McDonald, and Cynthia Palmer, and From Appalachia to Louisiana, Real People Fighting Petrochemical Polluters, with speakers Robert Taylor, Tish Taylor, and Martec Washington — and an in-depth conversation, The Plastics Playbook, with Mariah Blake and David Michaels.

SPEAKERS

Mariah Blake

Mariah Blake is an investigative journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Mother Jones, and other publications. She was a Murrey Marder Nieman Fellow in Watchdog Journalism at Harvard University.

Her book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, was named one of the best books of 2025 by The Washington Post and Scientific American. It is currently a finalist for several major prizes, including the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.

Jasmine A. McDonald, PhD

Jasmine McDonald, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. A molecular epidemiologist and educator, her research examines environmental exposures across critical windows of breast development and breast cancer risk. She is the Principal Investigator of multiple NIH-funded studies and is nationally recognized for her work on breast cancer risk and non-traditional environmental exposures (i.e., endocrine disruptor chemicals, childhood infections).

Dr. McDonald was awarded Columbia’s 2021 Presidential Teaching Award and teaches Cancer Epidemiology at Mailman. At Columbia’s Cancer Center, she is Co-Director of the Cancer Research, Training, and Education Coordination Office and Director of the YES in THE HEIGHTS program, a training initiative dedicated to advancing cancer research careers among young scholars.

In addition to her research, Dr. McDonald translates science into practical healthier living – collaborating with individuals and organizations on how to reduce harmful exposures in their everyday lives.

David Michaels, PhD, MPH

David Michaels, PhD, MPH, is an epidemiologist and Professor at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. He served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 2009-2017, the longest serving administrator in OSHA’s history. Previously, he served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety, and Health, charged with protecting workers, community, and environment around the nation’s nuclear weapons facilities.

Much of Dr. Michaels’ research focuses on protecting the integrity of science underpinning public health, safety, and environmental protections. He authored The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception (Oxford University Press, 2020) called “a tour de force” by Science Magazine and “a brave and important book, raising the alarm about the systemic corruption of science” by the journal Nature, and Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Ray Dorsey, MD

Dr. Ray Dorsey is the director of the Center for the Brain & the Environment at the Atria Health and Research Institute. The center’s mission is to identify the root causes of brain diseases from autism to Alzheimer’s so that we can prevent them. With his colleagues, he wrote Ending Parkinson’s Disease and the forthcoming The Parkinson’s Plan, which details a new path to preventing and treating this terrible disease.

Ray previously directed the Center for Health + Technology at the University of Rochester, chaired the international Huntington Study Group, led the movement disorders division at Johns Hopkins, and consulted for McKinsey & Company.

Cynthia Palmer

Cynthia Palmer serves as the senior analyst for petrochemicals at Moms Clean Air Force. She is keenly interested in ways to shift the world away from plastics and other petrochemicals. Cynthia trained at the intersection of law and environmental and occupational health. She received her AB, MPH, and JD from Harvard University.

Her prior positions include directing the pesticides division for a nonprofit; helping to draft global toxic chemicals treaties; protecting workers from radiation, beryllium, and other dangerous exposures in the nuclear weapons complex; and editing an environmental health and climate news service. For many years she served on the EPA federal advisory committee on pesticides. She has worked in Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. Cynthia’s work with Moms has been featured in MSN, Oil and Gas Watch, the Texas Tribune, the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Magazine, Common Dreams, Inside EPA, Forbes, ExxonKnews, Grist, and the New York Times.

At the local level, Cynthia chairs the Bicycle Advisory Committee in her county, in close coordination with pedestrian and children’s safety advocates. She is an all-season bicycle commuter and transportation runner. She is blessed with two daughters.

Robert Taylor

When Robert Taylor, Jr founded the Concerned Citizens of St. John (CCSJ) in 2017, the goal was to advocate for citizens’ health and safety by holding government and industry officials accountable for air, water, and soil quality.

Robert Taylor Jr. serves as the Executive Director of The Concerned Citizens of St. John Parish, a community organization dedicated to advocating for the rights and welfare of residents. With a steadfast commitment to social justice and community empowerment, Robert has been instrumental in driving initiatives that address critical issues affecting St. John Parish, ensuring that the voices of the underserved are heard and their needs met.

Tish Taylor

Tish is a lifelong resident of St. John the Baptist Parish. She is a mother and grandmother who has always worked closely with her community, joining the Concerned Citizens of St John (CCSJ) in 2017 and in 2024 becoming their Program Director.

Along with her father and Executive Director Robert Taylor, she shares the story of Cancer Alley and the unregulated toxic emissions that plague their community. CCSJ actively holds educational meetings, provide disaster planning, disaster relief after hurricanes and flooding events and works to hold public officials accountable for protecting frontline residents from toxic emissions released by industrial facilities.

She has worked extensively with nonprofit organizations in affordable housing, financial literacy, and construction programs.

Martec Washington

​Martec (Mar-Teese) “Tec” Washington is a Charleston native and community leader dedicated to protecting West Virginia’s people and resources. Currently serving with the Black Appalachian Coalition, he advocates for clean water and air in Appalachia.

His history of action is deep-rooted, ranging from the “Hard Time for Gun Crime” campaign with the DOJ to securing safe infrastructure with the governor’s office. Whether fighting for a new playground or safer bridges, the water that flows under them, or the air we breathe, Martec has spent his life turning advocacy into action for his neighbors.

Lani Wean

Lani Wean is the West Virginia Field Organizer. She has a bachelor’s degree in public health and experience in labor rights, reproductive health, and climate action organizing. She works with local mutual aid groups in West Virginia to combat some of their community’s most pressing issues and believes deeply in collective action. They know that West Virginians can take charge of their environmental and community health and be leaders in battling climate change.

Lani works to address environmental concerns such as petrochemical pollution and plastics pyrolysis, a process of burning plastic trash that produces harmful air pollution and toxic waste. Plastics and chemical companies have long exploited her region with little care for air quality or pollutants. She wants to honor West Virginia’s rich history of justice organizing by collaborating with folks on every level of community and government, especially younger generations. Lani has also worked as a farmhand and a pastry chef, and spends her free time hiking, reading, and playing ultimate frisbee. Her work has been featured in Charleston Gazette-Mail and West Virginia News Service.

Dominique Browning

More than a decade ago, Dominique Browning convened a series of conversations with women who had expertise in climate policy, regulatory and legal clean air issues, marketing, and business to discuss how to engage and mobilize people—and specifically mothers—to fight climate pollution. Moms Clean Air Force was formed of those conversations, with the mission of changing the focus of our national conversation about global warming from polar bears to people. Over the next decade, Moms Clean Air Force has grown to become a national organization of over 1.6 million mothers, with over a dozen state chapters, uniting to protect our children’s health and well-being by making sure our clean air, toxic chemicals, and climate rules and laws are as strong as they can be.

Previous to joining Environmental Defense Fund, Browning spent decades in the magazine world, where she worked as an editor at Esquire, Texas Monthly, and House & Garden. At the Washington Post’s Newsweek in the 1980s, she broke the glass ceiling in becoming the first woman assistant managing editor of any of the U.S. newsmagazines. She is the author of several books and has contributed regularly to Time.com and The New York Times.

Browning is a recipient of the Audubon Women in Conservation’s prestigious Rachel Carson Award. She was recently honored with an Advocates Award from Environmental Advocates of New York, named one of the Notable Leaders in Philanthropy 2025 by Crain’s New York Business, and featured on the 2025 TIME100 Climate List. She was also awarded the “BreatheLife Voice” honor by the World Health Organization. As a BreatheLife Voice, she joins an international contingent of leaders who use their platforms to call attention to the dangers of air pollution—and drive solutions.

Thoughts of the disruption and devastation ahead for humanity on our rapidly warming planet keep Browning up at night. Running Moms Clean Air Force is a way to be able to look her two sons, and her grandchild, in the eye, and tell them she is doing everything she can to protect the future for all children.

Amanda Rowoldt

Amanda Rowoldt is an Ohio Field Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force. She is a public policy expert who specializes in building common ground among diverse stakeholders to advance difficult, yet critical, issues. She believes diverse grassroots organizing combined with strategic relationship-building is key to addressing our nation’s most urgent problems. Amanda founded Work Family Balance, a 501c3 nonprofit that supports the comprehensive health needs of working parents and the comprehensive development of children. While working in this role and thinking critically about the stressors that compromise parents’ health and happiness, Amanda realized that climate change and plastic pollution were causing her stress.

Amanda lives in Central Ohio with her husband, children, and dog, Roxie. She has a master’s degree in conflict management from George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California Santa Cruz, and she is originally from Southern California. Her work has been featured in the Reporting Project, The Cool Down, and Entre Mamás El Podcast.

Amie Rivers

Amie Rivers is award-winning community journalist based in Iowa who’s worked at newspapers, television, and online-only outlets. Currently, she is the newsletter editor at Iowa Starting Line, where she writes and makes videos about the news of the day. Her projects include writing and compiling the Iowa Worker’s Almanac newsletter focused on worker issues and the labor movement, as well as its video companion, Clocked In: Iowa at Work. She’s extremely proud of the newsroom’s work on the Cancer in Iowa series in 2025, which explored why Iowa has the fastest-rising cancer rate in the nation.