Janette Dexter Sherman (née Miller; 10 July 1930 – 7 November 2019) was a physician,
toxicologist, author, and activist in the U.S. She researched
pesticide
Pesticides are substances that are meant to control pests. This includes herbicide, insecticide, nematicide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, microbicide, fungicide, and lampri ...
s,
nuclear radiation,
birth defects, breast cancer, and illnesses caused by
toxins in homes and was a pioneer in the field of occupational and environmental health. Sherman was an
expert witness or consultant in 5,000
workers' compensation cases about deadly chemicals, contaminated water, and toxic pesticides.
In the 1970s, during her practice of internal medicine in Detroit, she recognized common profiles in patients that became the basis of a campaign against, lawsuits regarding, and clinical research that established the occupational source of illnesses among her patients in the automobile industry and led to the development of regulations for greater protection of the workers and the banning of certain chemicals from the workplace.
[Seeyle, Katherine Q., ]
Dr. Janette Sherman, 89, Early Force in Environmental Science, Dies
', The New York Times, 29 November 2019 Among the largest collections of medical-legal files in the United States, her records are preserved at the
National Library of Medicine at the
National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda, Maryland. She was an
oncology professor at
Wayne State University.
Biography
Janette Dexter Miller was born in
Buffalo, New York to Wilma and Frank Miller, both of whom were pharmacists. After her parents divorced, she lived with her mother in
Warsaw, New York
Warsaw is a town in Wyoming County, in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 5,064 at the 2010 census. It is located approximately 37 miles east southeast of Buffalo and approximately 37 miles southwest of Rochester. The town may h ...
. A 1952 graduate of Western Michigan College of Education (now
Western Michigan University), Sherman studied biology and chemistry. She married her first husband, John Bigelow, that same year and moved with him to the San Francisco area while he served there in the navy. Sherman worked as a researcher at the
University of California, Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, now the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...
.
She was one of only six women in her graduating class at medical school, which she attended on the advice of a boss at the
Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory
The United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was an early military lab created to study the effects of radiation and nuclear weapons. The facility was based at the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, California.
Hist ...
at Hunters Point. She was graduated from the Medical School at Wayne State University in 1964.
She authored ''Chemical Exposure and Disease: Diagnostic and Investigative Techniques'' (1988) and ''Life’s Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer'' (2000) and is the editor of ''Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment'' (2007).
Personal
Dr. Sherman was married three times, to John Bigelow in 1952, to Howard Sherman in 1965, and in 1987, to her high school sweetheart, Donald Nevinger, who died in 2005. She had two children, Connie Bigelow and Charles Bigelow, two stepchildren, Kevin Nevinger and Donna Kellogg, and five grandchildren.
In 1986, she took up the cello and eventually played with an all-volunteer symphony orchestra in McLean, Virginia for several years.
[
]
Death
She died on 7 November 2019, at the age of 89, at an assisted-living center in Alexandria, Virginia. She had dementia and Addison's disease.
References
Physicians from Buffalo, New York
American toxicologists
Writers from Buffalo, New York
Activists from Buffalo, New York
Western Michigan University alumni
Wayne State University School of Medicine alumni
Wayne State University faculty
1930 births
2019 deaths
{{US-physician-stub