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Rick Smith is a prominent Canadian author and environmentalist. He is Executive Director of Environmental Defence Canada (since 2003) and co-author, with Bruce Lourie, of Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Life Affects Our Health, a look at everyday pollutants and the ease with which they accumulate in the human body. To illustrate this issue Smith and Lourie experimented on their own bodies, raising and lowering levels of toxic chemicals in their blood and urine through the performance of common activities.

A zoologist by training, Smith completed his doctoral research on an endangered subspecies of freshwater harbour seal in arctic Quebec with a nearby community of Cree hunters. From 1997 to 2002 Smith was Executive Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Canadian office and acting Director of the Fund’s UK office for a year. While at the Fund, Smith created public efforts to end Ontario’s spring bear hunt, won a Supreme Court of Canada ruling striking down the patenting of higher life forms and spurred the adoption of Canada’s first federal Species At Risk Act.

As Executive Director of Environmental Defence Canada, Smith established the Toxic Nation campaign, which tested prominent Canadians for measurable levels of pollutants in their blood. New government policies that he had played a role in shaping include the establishment of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt, the largest in the world ; Ontario’s new Endangered Species Act; and new statutes such as the Clean Water Act and the Green Energy Act. Smith was involved with the creation of the federal Chemicals Management Plan and Canada’s recent decision to become the first jurisdiction in the world to ban bisphenol A from children’s products.

Smith lives in Toronto with his wife Jennifer Story and their two young sons.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rick Smith", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0