Former Washington University professor Barry Commoner has died at the age of 95. TIME Magazine once put him on its cover and called him “the Paul Revere of Ecology.” He was one of the nation’s leading environmental voices in the 70s and 80s, a founder of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
He also was one of the early voices concerned with the long-term effects of nuclear fallout. He helped found the baby teeth survey done in St. Louis in the 1950s that showed children were absorbing radioactivity from nuclear bombs that were being tested in the atmosphere.
Some people with long political memories will recall Commoner ran as a Citizens Party presidential candidate in 1980 and began his commercials with a profanity — “Bullshit … Carter, Reagan, and Anderson. It’s all bullshit.”