Susan Shaw
Dr. Susan Shaw of the Marine Environmental Research Institute is an outspoken and influential voice on ocean pollution. She has conducted large-scale scientific investigations on the effects of hundreds of environmental chemicals in marine animals. She is also credited as the first scientist to show that brominated flame-retardants and perfluorinated chemicals in consumer products have contaminated marine mammals and commercially important fish stocks in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. Her research has influenced policy decisions in the US and abroad, including the Maine legislature's decision to ban the neurotoxic flame retardant decabromodiphenyl ether (Deca), and the subsequent US phase-out of the chemical. In 2009, she published the first comprehensive review of flame retardant chemicals in marine ecosystems of the American continents, and was appointed to the Editorial Board of the international journal Reviews on Environmental Health. Shaw has recently been nominated to be a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow.
