Biography

Dr. Philippe Grandjean conducts international research to assess adverse health effects that are linked to exposures to environmental chemicals, especially those that occur prenatally during highly vulnerable early life stages. He serves as the STEEP Center co-PI and PI of Project 2, which is aimed at exploring the adverse effects that occur in two groups of children at ages 14 and 5 years whose exposures to PFASs have been documented since they were born. The clinical part of project is carried out in the Faroe Islands, where there is a strong tradition for such studies with successful follow-up, while blood analyses are performed at the University of Southern Denmark.

Dr. Grandjean also serves as Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Southern Denmark, and he has previously been part-time at Harvard T.H. Chan School Public Health for 20 years. In 2002, Grandjean became founding Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal Environmental Health that has become a major medium for publishing research in this field. His book “Only on chance – and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation” was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press.

Among several awards for his research, he has received the ‘Mercury madness award’ for excellence in science in the public interest, from eight US environmental organizations in 2004, in 2016 the John R. Goldsmith Award from the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, and the Needleman Award in Children’s Environmental Health from the International Society for Children’s Health and the Environment in 2022. He served as a member of European Environment Agency’s scientific committee in 2012-2020 and of the World Health Organization’s European Advisory Committee on Health Research in 2011-2017.