| SHELDON K. FRIEDLANDER 1927 - 2007 |
Sheldon K. Friedlander, 79, developed a
way to find sources of smog particles
Los Angeles Times
by Valerie J. Nelson
Times Staff Writer
way to find sources of smog particles
Los Angeles Times
by Valerie J. Nelson
Times Staff Writer
| Sheldon K. Friedlander, a pioneering researcher who developed a method to identify the sources of Particles in smog in the Los Angeles Basin, a break through that led to greater understanding and regulation of air pollution, has died. He was 79. Friedlander, who was a UCLA chemical engineering professor, died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis February 9th at his Pacific Palisades home, his family said. While at Caltech in the 1970's he devised a way to analyze existing data that measured the chemical makeup of smog particles. By doing so, he was able to unravel who -- or what -- was contributing to air pollution at any given time. "He developed a picture of what was in the smog that was far more detailed than anyone had put together before," Rick Flagan, chairman of Caltech's chemical engineering departmant, told The Times this week. For instance, Friedlander was able to link lead particles to gasoline usage and zinc traces to the rubber in tires. The method he established has been used extensively to regulate air quality around the world, and a more sophisticated version is still used today, Flagan said. Friedlander was considered one of the fathers of aerosol science, the study of particles in the air and gases, and helped establish it as an independent discipline, colleagues said. "Sheldon was always one with deep insights and a quick grasp of interesting phenomena," Flagan said. "He had a profound effect on the field." After joining UCLA in 1983, Friedlander founded the school's Air Quality and Aerosol Technology Laboratory and became its director. In the mid-1980's, the lab's pollution detectives were searching for easier and cheaper ways to trap smokestack emissions. "We must find ways to control toxic wastes before they are produced rather than ways of disposing of them afterward," Friedlander told the teen magazine Scholastic update in 1985. In 1987 at UCLA, he established the nation's first engineering research center devoted entirely to solving the problem of hazardous waste management and served as its director for several years. Later in his career, Friedlander turned his attention toward synthesizing new materials by using aerosol chemical processes. His experiments with nanoparticles helped further understanding of how the microminiature units could form chains with elastic properties. Nanoscale materials could help make an unforgiving material such as ceramic stronger and easier to manufacture, Flagan said. From 1982 to 1998, Friedlander headed the Clean Air Scientific Advisory, Commitee, which provides independent advice to the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1982, he helped found the American Assn. for Aerosol research, which established the Friedlander Award in 1997. It recognizes an outstanding dissertation by a doctoral student in the field of Aerosol studies. Sheldon Kay Friedlander was born November 17, 1927, in New York City, the only child of Irving Friedlander, a paper box manufacturer, and his milliner wife, Rose. His middle name stood for his mother's original last name, Katzowitz. He interrupted his studies at Columbia University to serve in the Army just after World War ll but returned to earn a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering. He followed it with a master's from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. At the Harvard School of Public Health, Friedlander was captivated by the study of aerosols while working on an Atomic Energy Commission project about the control of radioactive aerosols. He earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois in 1954 and became a professor at John Hopkins University. A decade later, he arrived at Caltech and conducted air pollution experiments using huge Teflon balloons launched from a rooftop lab. On a blind date arranged by relatives, Friedlander met his wife, Marjorie Robbins, and married her eight weeks later in 1958. A Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim fellow, he delighted in fishing in the Angeles National Forest and watching the television show "Get Smart". His children remembered their father as a great dancer who refused to go to Disneyland, which he viewed as a vacation destination - and he vacationed only in places he was invited to lecture. They said he watched television at dinner only once, during the Lakers' NBA- record 33-game winning streak in the 1971-72 season. In addition to his wife, he is survived by four children, Eva, Zoe and Josiah Friedlander and Amelie Yehros; and eight grandchildren. -valerie.nelson@latimes.com RETURN TO HOME PAGE return to top |
Dorothy Green, a leading environmental activist whose anger over the pollution of Santa Monica Bay spurred her to establish the
grass-roots group Heal the Bay and head efforts to change water policy in California, died Monday at her Westwood home. She was
79. The cause was melanoma, according to her son, Joshua.
Green became a warrior for clean water in 1985 after hearing how her brother had been splattered with barely treated sewage
from an open drain at Ballona Creek in Marina del Rey. The creek runs into Santa Monica Bay, which encompasses a large swath of
the Southern California coast, from Point Dume south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Soon after the incident, Green huddled in her living room with a group of like-minded activists and formed Heal the Bay, which
became a leader in the fight to clean up and protect local coastal waters. One of the largest nonprofit environmental groups in Log
Angeles with 15,000 members, it is known for its annual Beach Report Card on water quality at California beaches.
When Green launched Heal the Bay, the challenges were significant.
"We had a 'dead zone' in the middle of Santa Monica Bay, we had bottom fish with tumors and 10-million-gallon sewage spills in
the middle of a bright summer day. None of that occurs anymore," said Mark Gold, a marine biologist and Heal the Bay's executive
director, who has been with the group almost from its inception. "That's Dorothy's legacy you see every time you look out at the bay."
Other Groups
Heal the Bay, of which Green was founding president, was only one of the products of her vision. She also founded the Los
Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to restoring and preserving the watershed, and
California Water Impact Network, which is focused on the equitable use of public water.
She was a mentor to many of the current leaders on water issues in the state, including Timothy F. Brick, chairman of the board
of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and a longtime water activist.
"She was quite unique in our generation," said Brick, who knew Green for 35 years. "She not only was personally a very
effective advocate but she founded a series of organizations that have been very effective in shaping policy on a variety of different
water issues."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a statement Monday, called her "a giant of the environmental movement."
Green, the daughter of Polish immigrants, was born in Detroit on March 16, 1929. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree
in music in 1951, the same year she married her husband, Jacob. He joined her family's construction business and from 1955 to 1960
the couple worked together in Desert Hot Springs building and later operating a motel and water system.
She took her first step toward activism in 1962, when she joined the Exceptional Children's Foundation to help people like her
son, Hershel, who is mentally challenged. For the next 17 years she ran the organization's Christmas card program, which raised
$25,000 a year. With another son facing the draft, she also became involved in the antiwar movement.
By the early 1970s she was a full-fledged citizen warrior. She campaigned for Proposition 20, which led to the creation of the
California Coastal Commission. Later, she joined the fight against a proposal to build a peripheral canal, which would bring Northern
California waters south through the California Aqueduct by looping around the polluted Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The
campaign got her "hooked on water" issues, according to Gold.
By 1985 she was a coordinator of Working Alliance to Equalize Rates, a group concerned with statewide water issues. She also
was president of the Los Angeles chapter of the League of Conservation voters, a politically oriented environmental group.
When the phone call came from her brother about his troubling discovery in Ballona Creek, she was, she recalled in an interview
with Surfline magazine, "between issues." She sprang into action, starting with a personal inspection of the spot in the creek where
largely untreated waste was spilling out next to a popular bike trail.
"The stench was undeniable", Green recalled in a 1987 interview with The Times.
Due to the efforts of Green and a small group of other activists a political stink ensued.
. Green called a number of leading environmentalists, including then-Assemblyman Tom Hayden, who represented the Westside.
With Green leading the charge, they exposed problems in the city of Los Angeles' decaying sewer system, applying public pressure
that generated critical attention.
The city was fined $180,000 by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board for several spills that had dumped nearly 200,000
gallons of waste into the ocean. The next year, 1986, the city agreed to introduce secondary treatment of sewage at its Hyperion
plant in El Segundo, a first step in a years-long process of detoxifying the bay.
The group soon began to hear reports of what many people believed to be the health consequences of swimming in polluted
waters.
"We started getting calls from surfers with infected ears and rashes," Green said. "We found out the lifeguards had an inordinate
history of cancer and health problems, but the county didn't recognize the links between water quality and these illnesses."
1987 Victory
When Green's group formally organized as a nonprofit, it chose the name Heal the Bay because "it communicates hope," Green
said. "That's the main thing we wanted to sell."
It held beach rallies to sign up members and generate publicity and offered testimony at hearings before regulatory boards. At
the center was Green, who colleagues said had a gift for communicating with everyone from sewage treatment engineers to
volunteers assigned to pick up beach litter.
"You could not say no to Dorothy," said Paula Daniels, a Los Angeles Board of Public Works commissioner who gave up a law
career to join Green's water battles.
By 1987, Heal the Bay counted 900 individuals and 60 organizations as members. They celebrated a major victory that year when
a federal judge approved a settlement between the city and the federal Environmental Protection Agency after Los Angeles agreed to
cease dumping sewage sludge into the bay and to upgrade the Hyperion facility.
Heal the Bay was granted friend-of-the-court status in the EPA lawsuit and assigned the role of monitoring the city's progress. By
1989, the Hyperion plant was nine years ahead of schedule in meeting an important federal pollution standard. in 1992, she
participated in the opening of a new sewer line tat would help end the dumping of sewage into the bay. Green served seven years as
president of Heal the Bay. In 1990 then-Mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to a term on the Board of Water and Power. She remained
a member of Heal the Bay's board.
The venerable activist was first diagnosed with melanoma 30 years ago. In 2003, the cancer reappeared and spread to her brain
and eventually to other organs but Green refused to let her illness interfere with the issues that remained at the top of her agenda.
In 2005 she spoke passionately at Heal the Bay's 20th anniversary gala on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier - 11 days after
undergoing a major operation. Earlier this year, she showed up at a board meeting a week after having her spleen and kidney
removed.
Two weeks ago, while bedridden and in hospice care, she wrote an eloquent plea for sensible water policy, which was published
on The Times' opinion page last Wednesday.
"Until her last breath," Gold said, "she was going to try and make this a better place."
In addition to Joshua, of Brentwood, and Hershel, of Diamond Bar, she is survived by her son Avrom, of Phoenix; brothers Morris
Cohen of Los Angeles and Gerald Cohen of Westwood; and three grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, 90068.
Memorial donations may be sent to California Water Impact Network, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, and
Heal the Bay.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
grass-roots group Heal the Bay and head efforts to change water policy in California, died Monday at her Westwood home. She was
79. The cause was melanoma, according to her son, Joshua.
Green became a warrior for clean water in 1985 after hearing how her brother had been splattered with barely treated sewage
from an open drain at Ballona Creek in Marina del Rey. The creek runs into Santa Monica Bay, which encompasses a large swath of
the Southern California coast, from Point Dume south to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Soon after the incident, Green huddled in her living room with a group of like-minded activists and formed Heal the Bay, which
became a leader in the fight to clean up and protect local coastal waters. One of the largest nonprofit environmental groups in Log
Angeles with 15,000 members, it is known for its annual Beach Report Card on water quality at California beaches.
When Green launched Heal the Bay, the challenges were significant.
"We had a 'dead zone' in the middle of Santa Monica Bay, we had bottom fish with tumors and 10-million-gallon sewage spills in
the middle of a bright summer day. None of that occurs anymore," said Mark Gold, a marine biologist and Heal the Bay's executive
director, who has been with the group almost from its inception. "That's Dorothy's legacy you see every time you look out at the bay."
Other Groups
Heal the Bay, of which Green was founding president, was only one of the products of her vision. She also founded the Los
Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, a nonprofit group dedicated to restoring and preserving the watershed, and
California Water Impact Network, which is focused on the equitable use of public water.
She was a mentor to many of the current leaders on water issues in the state, including Timothy F. Brick, chairman of the board
of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and a longtime water activist.
"She was quite unique in our generation," said Brick, who knew Green for 35 years. "She not only was personally a very
effective advocate but she founded a series of organizations that have been very effective in shaping policy on a variety of different
water issues."
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a statement Monday, called her "a giant of the environmental movement."
Green, the daughter of Polish immigrants, was born in Detroit on March 16, 1929. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree
in music in 1951, the same year she married her husband, Jacob. He joined her family's construction business and from 1955 to 1960
the couple worked together in Desert Hot Springs building and later operating a motel and water system.
She took her first step toward activism in 1962, when she joined the Exceptional Children's Foundation to help people like her
son, Hershel, who is mentally challenged. For the next 17 years she ran the organization's Christmas card program, which raised
$25,000 a year. With another son facing the draft, she also became involved in the antiwar movement.
By the early 1970s she was a full-fledged citizen warrior. She campaigned for Proposition 20, which led to the creation of the
California Coastal Commission. Later, she joined the fight against a proposal to build a peripheral canal, which would bring Northern
California waters south through the California Aqueduct by looping around the polluted Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The
campaign got her "hooked on water" issues, according to Gold.
By 1985 she was a coordinator of Working Alliance to Equalize Rates, a group concerned with statewide water issues. She also
was president of the Los Angeles chapter of the League of Conservation voters, a politically oriented environmental group.
When the phone call came from her brother about his troubling discovery in Ballona Creek, she was, she recalled in an interview
with Surfline magazine, "between issues." She sprang into action, starting with a personal inspection of the spot in the creek where
largely untreated waste was spilling out next to a popular bike trail.
"The stench was undeniable", Green recalled in a 1987 interview with The Times.
Due to the efforts of Green and a small group of other activists a political stink ensued.
. Green called a number of leading environmentalists, including then-Assemblyman Tom Hayden, who represented the Westside.
With Green leading the charge, they exposed problems in the city of Los Angeles' decaying sewer system, applying public pressure
that generated critical attention.
The city was fined $180,000 by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board for several spills that had dumped nearly 200,000
gallons of waste into the ocean. The next year, 1986, the city agreed to introduce secondary treatment of sewage at its Hyperion
plant in El Segundo, a first step in a years-long process of detoxifying the bay.
The group soon began to hear reports of what many people believed to be the health consequences of swimming in polluted
waters.
"We started getting calls from surfers with infected ears and rashes," Green said. "We found out the lifeguards had an inordinate
history of cancer and health problems, but the county didn't recognize the links between water quality and these illnesses."
1987 Victory
When Green's group formally organized as a nonprofit, it chose the name Heal the Bay because "it communicates hope," Green
said. "That's the main thing we wanted to sell."
It held beach rallies to sign up members and generate publicity and offered testimony at hearings before regulatory boards. At
the center was Green, who colleagues said had a gift for communicating with everyone from sewage treatment engineers to
volunteers assigned to pick up beach litter.
"You could not say no to Dorothy," said Paula Daniels, a Los Angeles Board of Public Works commissioner who gave up a law
career to join Green's water battles.
By 1987, Heal the Bay counted 900 individuals and 60 organizations as members. They celebrated a major victory that year when
a federal judge approved a settlement between the city and the federal Environmental Protection Agency after Los Angeles agreed to
cease dumping sewage sludge into the bay and to upgrade the Hyperion facility.
Heal the Bay was granted friend-of-the-court status in the EPA lawsuit and assigned the role of monitoring the city's progress. By
1989, the Hyperion plant was nine years ahead of schedule in meeting an important federal pollution standard. in 1992, she
participated in the opening of a new sewer line tat would help end the dumping of sewage into the bay. Green served seven years as
president of Heal the Bay. In 1990 then-Mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to a term on the Board of Water and Power. She remained
a member of Heal the Bay's board.
The venerable activist was first diagnosed with melanoma 30 years ago. In 2003, the cancer reappeared and spread to her brain
and eventually to other organs but Green refused to let her illness interfere with the issues that remained at the top of her agenda.
In 2005 she spoke passionately at Heal the Bay's 20th anniversary gala on the beach near the Santa Monica Pier - 11 days after
undergoing a major operation. Earlier this year, she showed up at a board meeting a week after having her spleen and kidney
removed.
Two weeks ago, while bedridden and in hospice care, she wrote an eloquent plea for sensible water policy, which was published
on The Times' opinion page last Wednesday.
"Until her last breath," Gold said, "she was going to try and make this a better place."
In addition to Joshua, of Brentwood, and Hershel, of Diamond Bar, she is survived by her son Avrom, of Phoenix; brothers Morris
Cohen of Los Angeles and Gerald Cohen of Westwood; and three grandchildren.
Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday at Mount Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, 90068.
Memorial donations may be sent to California Water Impact Network, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, and
Heal the Bay.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
D O R O T H Y G R E E N
L e a d i n g E n v i r o n m e n t a l i s t
1 9 2 9 -- 2 0 0 8
By: Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 14, 2008
L e a d i n g E n v i r o n m e n t a l i s t
1 9 2 9 -- 2 0 0 8
By: Elaine Woo
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 14, 2008
The Environmental Relief Center
Post Office Box 1084 Home Page
Studio City, California 91614-0084
envirorelief@prodigy.net Return to top
Post Office Box 1084 Home Page
Studio City, California 91614-0084
envirorelief@prodigy.net Return to top