Menu Close

Howard Walter Mielke

Adjunct professor, Tulane University

Dr. Howard W. Mielke received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1972 and he is currently an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Pharmacology at Tulane School of Medicine. His research focuses on Environmental Signaling in Medicine, specifically the impact of metals on pediatric health in urban environments. Reporting on Dr. Mielke's research and advocacy work on lead additives in gasoline, in 1976, he conducted a pioneering whole-city urban soil lead study in Baltimore, Maryland, which demonstrated the extraordinary disparity of high lead in the inner city soils compared with outlying areas of Baltimore. Further studies in Minnesota and Louisiana demonstrated the same urban soil lead pattern, and that children's varying lead exposures were related to the varying amounts of soil lead accumulated in urban communities. His major career contribution to children's health was helping to rapidly ban lead additives in gasoline. He testified before the U.S. Senate and his early studies aided the actions by Congress and the EPA, phasedown lead additives in U.S. automobile fuels at the end of 1986. Children's lead exposure underwent a current decline with a ban on lead additives in gasoline. The effectiveness of the phasedown of lead additives was noted by the World Bank and the UN, and the worldwide ban on leaded gasoline was achieved in August 2021. Lead additives continue, although no longer needed in gasoline for small piston engine airplanes. The small airplane's leaded fuel use accounts for about 70% of the lead aerosols in the US. Dr. Mielke and other researchers are pushing the US government to ban all lead additives in gasoline because of their adverse and lifelong effects on the health of US citizens.

Experience

  • 2012–present
    Professor, Tulane University School of Medicine

Honours

Local honors in New Orleans, member of the CDC Lead Exposure Prevention Advisory Committee (retired)