Thomas Webster

Tom Webster has several main research areas: 1) exposure routes and health hazards of chemicals used in consumer products, especially polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), other flame retardants, and perfluoralkyl compounds (PFCs); 2) mixtures of chemicals (with applications in toxicology and epidemiology); 3) endocrine disruption; 4) methodological aspects of environmental epidemiology, particularly issues in spatial epidemiology such as disease mapping and clusters, ecologic bias, and the use of combinations of individual and group level data.

Dr. Webster served on the National Research Council’s Subcommittee on Fluoride in Drinking Water and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Making Best Use of the Agent Orange Exposure Reconstruction Model.  The work of Dr. Webster and his colleagues and students has been featured in Environmental Health Perspectives (“PFCs and Cholesterol: A Sticky Connection,” “Unwelcome Guest: PBDEs in Indoor Dust”), Bostonia magazine (“Trouble at Home,” “You Are What You Eat, Including Your Sofa”), Discovery News (“Handwashing Cuts Flame Retardant Exposure”) and the National Public Radio show “Living on Earth,” among other places.