Michael Greenberg is distinguished professor emeritus of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University. He studies environmental health and risk analysis and has written more than 35 books and more than 350 articles. Professor Greenberg was a member of National Research Council Committees that focus on the U.S. plutonium disposition; destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile; the degradation of the U.S. government physical infrastructure; and sustainability and the U.S. EPA. He served on the EPA Science Advisory Board environmental justice committee. He chaired a committee for the U.S. Senate and House Appropriations Committees examining the U.S. DOE’s prioritization of human health and safety in its environmental management programs. Professor Greenberg served as area editor for social sciences and then editor-in-chief of Risk Analysis: An International Journal during the period 2002-2013 and was associate editor for environmental health for the American Journal of Public Health from 1997 through June 2020. Professor Greenberg was dean of the school or associate dean of the faculty of the Bloustein during the period July 1, 2000, through September 30, 2018.
His current work focuses on environmental justice, which is expressed in several recent studies. Two reports co-authored with three colleagues from the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation consider the challenge of classifying areas around U.S. Department of Energy sites regarding their relative need for support to manage environmental injustice. A second examines many of the earliest U.S. Superfund sites for lingering local stigma. The third is Environmental & Social Justice Challenges Near America’s Most Popular Museums, Parks, Zoos & Other Heritage Attractions (Springer 2022) which traces the relationship between building affluence clusters around attractions, gentrifying neighborhoods, redlining, displacing people and providing affordable housing in major urban areas of the United States.