John Wargo is a Professor of Risk Analysis, Environmental Policy, and Political Science, and Chair of the Yale College Environmental Studies Major and Program. B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.L.A. University of Massachusetts, and Ph.D., Yale University. He holds appointments in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Political Science, and is a fellow of Branford College. He has been a professor at Yale since 1985. He has lectured extensively on the limits and potential of environmental law, with a focus on human health.

Professor Wargo also wrote Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides, published by Yale University Press in 1998, presenting a history of law and science governing pesticides with special attention to the vulnerability of infants and children. The book won the American Association of Publishers award as the Best Scholarly & Professional Book in Government and Political Science in 1998. He is also co-author of Ecosystems: Science and Management published by Springer-Verlag in 1998.

Professor Wargo participated in several National Academy of Sciences committees, analyzing children’s exposure to toxic substances. He also has testified before both Senate and House Committees, and been an advisor to the White House, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture organization, the EPA, USDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on environmental threats to children’s health. He has participated in the design of federal and state laws and regulations intended to reduce human exposures to air pollution, pesticides, plastics, mercury, and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.