Deborah Wallace

Deborah Wallace received a doctorate in ecology from Columbia University in 1971 and a certificate in epidemiology from Mount Sinai Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in 1980. She was a pioneer of environmental impact assessment in the 1970s as manager of biological studies for Consolidated Edison and then the New York Power Authority. She also held positions at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College and worked at Consumers Union for nearly 20 years. Although now retired, she continues to analyze patterns of urban processes and their public health consequences.With her husband and colleague, Rod Wallace, she has studied the causes and consequences of the 1970s fire epidemic for almost 50 years. They coauthored the books A Plague on Your Houses: How New York City Was Burned Down and National Public Health Crumbled, Studies on the Collapse of Fire Service in New York City 1972–1976: Impact of Pseudoscience on Public Policy, Right-to-Work Laws and the Crumbling of American Public Health, and Politics, Hierarchy, and Public Health: Voting Patterns in the 2016 US Presidential Election. She served as an expert witness in litigation for victims of large plastics fires and wrote In the Mouth of the Dragon: Toxic Fires in the Age of Plastics based on these cases.