Nancy Balter

Nancy J. Balter is an academic scientist who spent the majority of her career on the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine teaching pharmacology and toxicology. Her main associate was Professor Sorell Schwartz at the Department of Pharmacology at the University. She is listed as a "tobacco industry consultant" in several places in the industry's documents, including an April 6, 1988 letter written by Susan Stuntz, Vice President of Issues Management at the Tobacco Institute and a 1986 letter from John Rupp of the industry's law firm Covington & Burling.

Balter served on the Editorial Board of the London-based Environmental Technology Letters, a peer reviewed scientific journal, which had at the head of its Advisory Board another enthusiastic tobacco consultant, Professor Roger Perry. This journal published material favorable to the cigarette industry.

In the USA, Balter oversaw the day to day operations of the Center for Environmental Health and Human Toxicology (CEHHT) ETS literature database, and was a member of the IAPAG group. She traveled on behalf of the industry's response to proposed environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) legislation.

Core organizations
Over the years, Balter was heavily involved in organizations and projects comprised of, or associated with, the tobacco industry. These operations were generally handled by the Tobacco Institute:


 * The Center for Environmental Health and Human Toxicology, usually known by the abbreviation CEHHT,
 * This group took over a database of abstracts and reports on smoking and health originally put together by Myron Weinberg at the Weinberg Group, using tobacco funding. The database had been constructed under a Weinberg contract to the tobacco industry, but it had grown too large for the Weinberg Group to handle with their early minicomputers.


 * Indoor Air Pollution Advisory Group, which is best known as IAPAG.

Balter appeared as a scientific witness before many regulatory bodies, legislative inquiries, and conference assemblies on behalf of tobacco company interests, and she played a role, with the industry lawyers, in selecting scientists for the tobacco industry's ETS consultancy program. 

Main associates
Based at Georgetown University, Balter appears to be the central point of contact for both the IAPAG group and the CEHHT operation. In some tobacco documents she appears to act as the manager (i.e., "Balter noted that she had instructed someone in IAPAG to critique Weber's research.")

Those closely associated with her were:


 * Sorell L. Schwartz -- a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Georgetown University, chair of IAPAG from 1984-88, at which time he dissolved the group. His contact with the Tobacco Institute was through its legal firm Covington & Burling
 * Raphael Witorsch and Philip Witorsch - both long-term scientific witnesses for the tobacco industry
 * James Kilpatrick a biostatistician at the Medical College of Virginia, Commonwealth University
 * Myron Weinberg of the Weinberg Group - the tobacco industry's main recruiting organization.

Background
Balter received her Ph.D. in pharmacology from Georgetown University, and her BA from Washington University in St. Louis.

She later became the "research associate professor at the Georgetown University's Department of Biology, and later in the Department of Pharmacology.

Current career
In 1995, Balter retired from academics and relocated to Colorado.

On December 9, 1997, Dr. Balter testified before the Committee on Environment and Public Works at a field hearing on the presence of MTBE in the nation's water supply. The hearing was held in Sacramento, California. At the hearing she was listed as "Nancy J. Balter, principal, Center for Environmental Health and Human Toxicology, and former associate professor of pharmacology, Georgetown University Medical Center," indicating she was still representing CEHHT in 1997.