Tyrone Hayes
Tyrone B. Hayes is a Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California-Berkeley. He was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina where he developed an interest in amphibian biology and the influences that environmental changes have on their development, growth, and reproduction. After graduating from Dreher High School in 1985, Mr. Hayes attended Harvard University. He graduated in 1989 after writing an honor’s thesis on the influence of temperature on larval growth, development, metamorphosis and sex differentiation in woodfrogs. He then obtained his PhD from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. For his doctoral dissertation, he examined the role of hormones in mediating developmental responses to environmental changes in amphibians. Mr. Hayes completed his doctoral work in 1993 and began post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health (funded by the National Science Foundation) where he examined molecular mechanisms of hormone action in amphibians. In 1994, he joined the faculty at Berkeley as an Assistant Professor. Through his research, he began to realize that the most important environmental factors affecting amphibian development were synthetic chemicals (such as pesticides) that interact with hormones in a variety of ways to alter developmental responses. In 1998, Mr. Hayes was appointed Associate Professor with tenure at Berkeley and then to full professor ion 2003. By this time, his work focused on the effects of endocrine disrupting pesticides on amphibian growth, development, reproduction and immune function. In that same year, he began consulting with and conducting research for the chemical company, Novartis (which eventually became the agri-chemical giant, Syngenta Crop Protection). His laboratory showed that the herbicide atrazine (the number one selling product for Syngenta) is a potent endocrine disruptor that chemically castrates and feminizes exposed male amphibians at low ecologically relevant concentrations. Mr. Hayes' work continues to focus on the effects of pesticides on amphibians and the role of this threat in amphibian declines. Furthermore, through endocrine-disrupting mechanisms identical to those acting in amphibians, atrazine produces effects in other animals, including prostate and breast cancer and decreased fertility in laboratory rodents. These same effects are associated with atrazine exposure in humans. In addition to the scientific interests, this issue is one of environmental justice. Citizens in lower socio-economic classes and, in particular, ethnic minorities are less likely to have access to this information, more likely to be employed and live in areas where they are exposed to pesticides, less likely to have access to appropriate health care, and more likely to die from prostate and breast cancer.