Mary Amdur

Mary Amdur was born in 1921 in Donora, Pennsylvania. She received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1943 from the University of Pittsburgh, moving to Cornell University to study biochemistry at the postgraduate level. She received her PhD in biochemistry in 1946, writing her thesis on the "Role of Manganese and Choline in Bone Formation in the Rat". After achieving her PhD, she worked at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary before joining Philip Drinker's team at Harvard School of Public Health in 1949. By 1953 she had married another scientist in the field, Benjamin Amdur, with whom she had a son, David.

The American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) funded Drinker to investigate the 1948 Donora smog, as the company had an interest in showing that its primary pollutants (sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide) had not significantly contributed to the damage it caused. In the middle of 1953, Amdur and her husband developed a method of spraying a combination mist of sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide into humid chambers containing guinea pigs to investigate the damage that it would cause to their lungs. Guinea pigs were used as they breathe more deeply through their mouths than smaller rodents which breathe through their noses. The Amdurs bought their own guinea pigs for the mini project, and spent a holiday weekend doing the investigation.

Amdur presented the results of the experiment, that inhaling the combination mist led to dramatic effects on breathing, loss of weight and lung disease, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science at their annual meeting in December 1953. She then wrote a damning paper on the effects of lower levels of sulfuric acid on humans, levels similar to those of the 1948 smog. The paper, and her attempt to present the associated findings to the American Industrial Hygiene Association, caused her many difficulties. Amdur was accosted and threatened by two thugs in an elevator at the association's 1954 annual meeting. She presented the findings regardless. As Drinker received funding from ASARCO, the company's management assumed that they would hold sway over what was published. When Amdur returned from the meeting, Drinker demanded that Amdur remove her name from the paper and to withdraw it from The Lancet, despite the fact it had already been accepted. Amdur refused Drinker's demands, so her position on his staff was removed and she was left to find new work. The paper was never published.

She quickly found a new untenured research associate role under James Whittenberger, Chair of Physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, working with Dr. Jere Mead. She continued the research on air pollution, which she began under Drinker, until she left the school in 1977. Partly because of the difficulty in obtaining tenure at Harvard, both for herself and for her colleague Sheldon Murphy, and partly because she needed to work with engineers to produce suitable combustion products, she moved her research to the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and accepted a promotion to lecturer, securing funding for 12 years. When she moved, her new focus was the role of metals in the inhalation of sulfuric acid. Dissatisfied with the attention the research received at MIT, she moved to the Institute of Environmental Medicine at New York University in 1989 as a senior research scientist, where she remained until her retirement in 1996.

In 1953, Amdur was inducted as a member of Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health. In 1974, she received the Donald E. Cummings Memorial Award from the American Industrial Hygiene Association in recognition of her lifetime contributions and application of her knowledge in the field. The American Academy of Industrial Hygiene Council awarded her the Henry F. Smyth Jr. Award in 1984 for identifying and fulfilling research needs within the industrial hygiene profession. In 1986 she received the Inhalation Section of the Career Achievement Award from the Society of Toxicology. She received the Herbert E. Stockinger Award from the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists in 1989 In 1988 she gained, the Mid-Atlantic Section, Society of Toxicology Ambassador Award. Then in 1997, she was awarded the Merit Award from the same society, in celebration of her achievements throughout her life and her contributions to Toxicology.

Amdur died on 16 February 1998 of a heart attack while returning from a holiday in Hawaii. At least three societies wrote obituaries and a toxicology book was dedicated to her memory. A Toxicology Society Award was set up in her name by students and colleagues. The award, the Mary Amdur Student Award is presented for the Inhalation and Respiratory Specialty Section. She is considered the "mother of smog research" and her work had "a major role in the development of air pollution standards."