TY - JOUR
AU - Gordon, Terry
AB - To remember Mary O. Amdur simply as a pioneer in air pollution toxicology, who overcame gender, political, and scientific barriers to proclaim the potential for interactions between sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, would be an injustice. In our discussions of what to highlight in this brief biography, we struggled with accomplishments we thought merited emphasis versus what we thought Mary would want to see accented. Indeed, Mary shunned the spotlight most of her career, for she felt she was simply making inquiries in small, logical steps, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of how mixtures of air pollutants interacted to adversely affect health. She was never on the conventional academic career ladder, either in fact or in spirit. Mary was a woman of principle, even when this led to decisions that would take her career over the “hard-road,” for she did what she felt was right despite the consequences. She valued her character and loyalty to those she trusted more highly than her career, knowing she was more than a research scientist. Though deserving of a title such as “Mother of air pollution toxicology,” Mary was every bit a Renaissance woman. She was, in addition, an accomplished chemist, a lover of English and French literature and music, a naturalist, an able gardener and baker, a wife and homemaker, and a loyal friend and mentor. As a woman in the strongly male-dominated field of environmental and occupational health of the late 1940`s through the 1950`s, Mary Amdur's research career was blocked by a number of barriers. Mary was an exceptional student throughout her academic life. She received her BS in Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 1943, and in just 3 years, was awarded her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell (Role of Manganese and Choline in Bone Formation in the Rat). She soon moved to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston to allow her husband, Ben, to pursue his doctoral degree. In 1949, Mary relocated to the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) to work with Professor Phillip Drinker (known as the inventor of the iron lung). Her primary charge was to develop an assay to measure lead in ambient particulate matter. She succeeded at this task, but the success was soon forgotten in the controversy surrounding her endeavors to investigate the role of sulfur oxides and health. Mary had become interested in air pollution following the infamous Donora, Pennsylvania, smog of 1948. She accepted the task of initiating investigations into the irritancy of sulfuric acid in human lungs, under the direction of Professor Drinker and supported by funds from the American Smelting and Refining Company (AS&R). The company was interested in demonstrating that sulfuric acid was a minor contributor to the adverse health effects in the Donora incident, especially to deny any role it may have had in the observed mortality. They may have hoped that Professor Drinker would keep a “watchful eye” on the research (from Muscle and Blood, 1974, by Rachael Scott). However, Mary produced some very provocative data suggesting potentially adverse effects in human subjects who inhaled either or both sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide—the latter being the main AS&R emission and the one pollutant they did not want studied. In the early 1950s very little work had been done on the cardiopulmonary effects of inhaled pollutants, except in animal studies that typically used lethality as the end point. However, Mary and her husband had conducted some earlier experiments on a long July 4th weekend, 1953, on guinea pigs purchased with their own money. The results of their experiments showed dramatic short-term effects from breathing both irritants. The data had been presented at the AAAS meeting in December 1953, with no objections or negative sanctions. However, her findings of adverse physiologic effects in humans at relatively low concentrations—not unlike those estimated for Donora at the time of the smog incident—were met with great dismay and disparagement by the lawyers of the western smelter industries, as well as by the executives of AS&R. She presented this and her research on lead at the annual meeting of the American Industrial Hygiene Association held in Chicago in April 1954. At the meeting she found herself alone, trying to outwit the somewhat strong-armed representatives of AS&R. Meanwhile, considerable pressure, of the financial type, was brought to bear on HSPH, and Professor Drinker specifically, to convince Mary to withdraw her presentation and delay publication of her work. Mary did not concede, and even after Professor Drinker himself withdrew the already submitted paper from the Lancet, Mary convinced him to rescind his decision and allow the paper through. The result was termination of the project and the loss of her research associate position under Drinker, on the very day she returned from Chicago. Professor James Whittenberger, Chair of Physiology at HSPH, who earlier had said he had interest in her work, quickly hired her as a research associate to expand upon these initial efforts with the help of Dr. Jere Mead, the renowned lung physiologist. One best understands Mary's frustration under these circumstances as she describes the increasing looseness of her engagement ring on her finger during this period, and one senses the outrage of academic colleagues at such shenanigans, as documented by her correspondence with other historical names in industrial medicine, including Alice Hamilton, Herbert Stokinger, Harriet Hardy, Henry Smyth, Anna Baetjer, and Harold Hodge. In the end, Mary's Pennsylvania Dutch stubbornness and adherence to principle prevailed. She soon gained a reputation as one who could not be crossed more than once. With the early support of Whittenberger and Mead at Harvard, she was able to launch her air-pollution research and to develop a physiological animal model that, for more than four decades, became the basis of her studies to understand the interaction of particles and gases in the mammalian respiratory tract. Although Mary was quite successful in funding her research at the HSPH, she left in 1977 for both political and scientific reasons. She was well published and widely known for her provocative research with the guinea pig model. She had demonstrated the irritancy potential of sulfur dioxide and its ability to interact with water-soluble metal salts to further oxidize the sulfur in the particle, which travels to the deep lung, where its potential for irritation would be magnified. Despite this unique and pioneering work, and after nearly 30 years at Harvard, she never rose above the rank of Associate Professor, without tenure. In a battle with the dean over the tenure of her beloved colleague, Sheldon Murphy, she vowed to take her program elsewhere. She had a vision that a collaboration with metallurgical and chemical engineers would provide answers to her questions regarding the effect of the chemical and physical interaction of particles and gases on the lung. Across the river at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she saw such a potential, and thus offered her program to MIT if she could establish those liaisons. She quickly moved there, accepting the unheralded position of Lecturer, and focused her energy on spearheading a unique project, funded by industry and federal support, to tie toxicological research to an engineering base that could produce relevant aerosols of freshly-formed combustion products from fossil fuels for inhalation exposure studies. This work led to the demonstrations that physicochemical interactions between sulfur dioxide and fresh metal oxides from coal combustion led to the formation of sulfuric acid on the surface of the metal oxide, which was capable of substantial effects on the physiology and structural integrity of the guinea pig lung. Despite her highly successful MIT program in terms of funding and notoriety, Mary remained in a non-faculty position for 12 years, and finally realized that air pollution toxicology would remain a stepchild at MIT. Thus, at the age of 67, she moved her program to the Institute of Environmental Medicine of New York University in Tuxedo Park, New York, where she merged her efforts with Drs. Rich Schlesinger and Mort Lippmann. She recruited a team from her staff at MIT and from around the nation to carry on her work. She gained the title of Senior Research Scientist, but was again untenured, despite her continued success in acquiring research support funds. Loving her home and gardens in Westwood, Massachusetts, and with the eventual illness of her beloved husband, Ben, she commuted alone from Massachusetts to Tuxedo Park for two days a week, to ensure the direction of her research. After retirement in 1996, she continued to write and consult on scientific papers emanating from New York University, to edit manuscripts, and to preserve the legacy of her 46+ years of effort. The lack of recognition by her employers had had little effect on Mary, and frequently the contrarian, she reveled in the struggle. Not many of us could have waged the battles of Mary Amdur, achieved such success and respect, and dismissed with such grace the disservice rendered by the academic establishment. We would consider ourselves fortunate to have her character and strength. Because of Mary's research accomplishments, she received many awards throughout her career. These included the 1974 Donald E. Cummings Memorial Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the 1984 Henry F. Smyth Award from the American Academy of Industrial Hygiene, the 1986 Career Achievement Award from the Inhalation section of the Society of Toxicology; and the 1989 Herbert E. Stockinger Award from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists. In 1997 Mary also became the first woman to receive the Merit Award from the Society of Toxicology. Although this last award was the one which gave her the most pleasure, she looked forward to receiving it with dark humor. She was well aware that colleagues, including her close friend Sheldon Murphy, had died within one year of receiving the same award. Unfortunately, Dr. Amdur did pass away just short of one year after the award, in February of 1998. Mary Amdur directly supervised only a handful of doctoral students, but she mentored many more with her open-door policy. Her scientific and career advice was highly influential in the development of the careers of many. Perhaps her main educational contribution lies within the covers of Cassarett and Doull's: The Study of Poisons. She served as Editor on editions 2 through 4, and she played a significant behind-the-scenes role in providing support and energy to get the first edition out after the death of Louis Casserett during its preparation. Her tireless efforts, her painstaking reviews of the chapters, and her insistence upon up-to-date-accuracy and integrity were central to the success and widespread recognition of the quality of the text. For those of us fortunate enough to have known or worked with Mary, her personal attributes paralleled her scientific prowess. She was fair and honest, held strong convictions, and possessed a wry wit and demeanor; yet she was infinitely compassionate with students and their plights. Her directness and insightful thinking were refreshing to all, and she was an exquisite writer and editor. But her Easter-season hot-cross buns, and likewise her Halloween ginger cookies, were much more appreciated by her classes than any lecture outline. Mary was very much a modern-day Renaissance person. She was classically literate and loved everything French. During the unusual free time of her retirement years, she traveled around the world exploring and studying regional flora and tending to her gardens and greenhouse at home. Unquestionably, she will be remembered for her impact on air pollution regulation and inhalation toxicology, but for those of us who were fortunate enough to have shared time and space with her, she will be remembered most for her intellectual enthusiasm, her nurturing of good science, and her personal caring. 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed. Fax: (914) 731-3536. E-mail: terry.gordon@env.med.nyu.edu. © 2000 Society of Toxicology
TI - Mary O. Amdur
JO - Toxicological Sciences
DO - 10.1093/toxsci/56.1.5
DA - 2000-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/mary-o-amdur-xYLkBiNcRc
SP - 5
EP - 7
VL - 56
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -