Museum Health & Safety: A Focus On Pesticides And Silica Dust

Professor Goldsmith is an occupational and environmental epidemiologist who taught environmental and occupational health in the School's graduate and undergraduate programs from 1999 to 2009. He is an expert on environmental health, with a particular interest in fracking, silica, silicosis and cancer risks; respiratory illnesses and exposure to paints and welding fumes; and the chronic health effects, including cancer, associated with pesticide exposure. Other areas of expertise include the legal aspects of occupational and environmental health research, and chronic illness and agriculture. Dr. Goldsmith has also worked with Native American communities on the issue of the health risks of repatriating sacred artifacts that have been treated with pesticides and other chemical preservatives.

Dr. Goldsmith has organized three international symposia on silica, silicosis and cancer, and other chronic diseases.  He was a consultant to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as it revised the U.S. national silica dust standard, and in 2014 testified at hearings focusing on the impacts of OSHA’s new silica regulation.  He has been a consultant to the Washington DC Departments of Health and Environmental.

From 2009 to 2011 Dr. Goldsmith was detailed to the Veterans Administration via an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Exchange

In 2014 Dr. Goldsmith was Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Faculty of Medicine, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Maria Fusco has been chief conservator since 2016, following five years as associate conservator. She oversees the conservation laboratory at the museum’s Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center.

Under her leadership, the Conservation Department has expanded its role as an international resource in textile collections care, providing training to emerging and established professionals. Fusco has mentored numerous fellows and interns, including those supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She also guided the lab through a complete equipment upgrade supported by the Avenir Foundation.

Fusco received a bachelor’s of science in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a master’s in textile conservation from the Textile Conservation Centre at the University of Southampton in England. She has worked as a conservator at institutions in New York and Denmark. She completed an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and a Samuel H. Kress Conservation Fellowship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.