Biography
Richard Thomas Burnett received his PhD from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, in 1982 in Mathematical Statistics. He is a senior research scientist with the Healthy Environments and Consumer Safety Branch of Health Canada, where he has been working since 1984 on issues relating to environmental risk assessment. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
Dr. Burnett’s interests are in mathematical and statistical methods to track health risks from environmental hazards in both space and time, allowing assessments of the effectiveness of risk-management strategies with respect to improvements in population health.
Dr. Burnett has served on numerous US National Academy of Science Committees and university program advisory committees. He is a member of the Global Burden of Disease expert group on outdoor air pollution and a is recipient of the Federal Public Service Excellence in Science 2012 Award and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.
McDuffie EE, Martin RV, Spadaro JV, Burnett R, Smith SJ, O'Rourke P, Hammer MS, von Donkelaar A, Bindle L, Shah V, Jaegle L, Luo G, Yu F, Adeniran JA, Lin J, Brauer M. Source sector and fuel contributions to ambient PM2.5 and attributable mortality across multiple spatial scales. Nature Communications. 14 June 2021. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23853-y.
Cohen A, Brauer M, Burnett R, et al. Estimates and 25-year trends of the global burden of disease attributable to ambient air pollution: an analysis of data from the Global Burden of Disease study 2015. The Lancet. 2017 Apr.
GBD 2015 Risk Factors Collaborators. Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioral, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. The Lancet. 2016 Oct 7; 388:1659–1724.
Shin HH, Fann N, Burnett RT, Cohen A, Hubbell BJ. Outdoor fine particles and nonfatal strokes. Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. 2014. DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000162.
Shin HH, Cakmak S, Brion O, Villeneuve P, Turner MC, Goldberg MS, Jerrett M, Chen H, Crouse Dan, Peters P, Pope CA III, Burnett RT. Indirect adjustment for multiple missing variables applicable to environmental epidemiology. Environ Res. 2014. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24972508.
Burnett RT, Pope CA, Ezzati M, Olives C, Lim SS, Mehta S, Shin HH, Singh G, Hubbell B, Brauer M, Anderson HR, Smith KR, Balmes JR, Bruce NG, Kan H, Laden F, Prüss-Ustün A, Turner MC, Gapstur SM, Diver WR, Cohen A. An integrated risk function for estimating the Global Burden of Disease attributable to ambient fine particulate matter exposure. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2014 Feb 11.
Crouse DL, Peters PA, van Donkelaar A, et al. Risk of mortality in relation to long-term exposure to low concentrations of fine particulate matter: a Canadian national-level cohort study. Environmental Health Perspect. 2012; 120:708-714.
Pope CA III, Burnett RT, Turner MC, Cohen A, Krewski D, Jerrett M, Gapstur S, Thun MJ. Lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality associated with particulate matter exposure from ambient air pollution and cigarette Smoke: Shape of the Exposure-Response Relationships. Environ Health Perspect. Nov. 2011; 119(11):1616-1621.
Smith KR, Jerrett M, Anderson HR, Burnett RT, Stone V, Derwent R, Atkinson RW, Cohen A, Shonkoff SB, Krewski D, Pope CA III, Thun MJ, Thurston G. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: health implications of short-lived greenhouse pollutants. Lancet. 2009; 374(9707):2091-2103.
Jerrett M, Burnett RT, Pope III A, Ito K, Thurston G, Krewski D, Shi Y, Calle E, Thun M. Long-term ozone exposure and mortality. New England Journal of Medicine. 2009; 360:1085-1095.