A Joyous Presencei

A leading environmentalist; a beloved sister, daughter, friend, and colleague; and a joyous presence on the dance floor, in a music hall, and at environmental demonstrations.

Mary Beth was widely recognized as one of Michigan’s most prominent environmental advocates. Her 15-year professional career included positions with the Sierra Club, Greenpeace – where she directed a canvass office – and the Ecology Center, where she worked for the past 12 years, most recently as its Environmental Health Campaign Director.

She is equally famous in Ann Arbor and the surrounding area for her contagious, positive, dynamic personality. Among her circle of friends are musicians, artisans, professionals, and regular folks of every persuasion who have all enjoyed the best conversations and dancing of their lives because they shared them with Mary Beth. Her personal hobbies were also numerous, and included kayaking, cross country skiing, swing, tap, and rock-and-roll dancing, cribbage, and gardening.

Over the years she worked with dozens of local communities throughout Michigan to help them address toxic pollution problems. Among the most notable of her accomplishments was her work as a leader of a successful campaign to shut down the Henry Ford Hospital incinerator in Detroit. She also worked with residents in Hamtramck to close a troubled, dirty and polluting commercial incinerator there. In Romulus, she helped local residents fight the establishment of a toxic waste injection well. And she was a leader of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, a Detroit-based coalition fighting for environmental justice.


Contributions to a Memorial Fund in Mary Beth's honor to continue her work may be sent to: The Ecology Center c/o Mary Beth Doyle Memorial Fund 117 N. Division Ann Arbor, MI 48104

Mary Beth was a leading voice for stronger environmental health protections in Michigan. Most recently she had been working to enact legislation to ban toxic brominated flame-retardants – neurotoxins found in common consumer products now discovered to be building up in the environment and in our bodies. Just last Wednesday the legislation passed the full Senate and is expected to be approved by the House and signed by the Governor. She helped organize numerous legislative briefings on clean production and chemicals policy and was instrumental in the state environmental community’s development of the Don’t Trash Michigan campaign, which successfully lobbied the Legislature to pass laws regulating outof-state waste. Mary Beth also worked with local natural foods retailers to find nontoxic alternatives to can linings that leach Bisphenol A, an endocrine disrupter.

In 1995, Mary Beth helped organize one of the country’s first conferences about endocrine disrupting chemicals. In 1999, she persuaded the first retailer in training for health professionals on the connections between the environment and children’s health with the AAP, the Mt. Sinai Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, the Michigan State Medical Society, and the Michigan Public Health Institute. She also worked with many health-impacted groups, including the Endometriosis Association, the Learning Disabilities Association, the Breast Cancer Fund, and others on the environmental causes of disability and illness.

She was a leader in national and international coalitions including Health Care Without Harm, Be Safe Coalition, Coming Clean Coalition, Stop Dioxin Campaign, the Dow Campaign, the Alliance for Safe Alternatives, Safe Hometowns Campaign, and the Childproofing Campaign, each of which was designed to protect people from toxic substances. She recently worked on a nationwide campaign to test the dust of homes and offices to demonstrate the toxic components of everyday consumer products and to lobby for safer alternatives. She worked with communities across the country to shut down polluting incinerators and to develop uniform standards for alternative wastetreatment technologies.

Finally, she was a major figure in environmental issues in her adopted hometown of Ann Arbor. She led the grassroots portion of the successful People for Parks campaign to pass a citizen-initiated millage proposal for parkland acquisition – the program that was later expanded into the City’s Parks and Greenbelt Program. She worked with her neighbors on a successful campaign to prevent development of The Bluffs, a natural wooded area near the Huron River and her home. She helped pass the ban on mercury thermometers in Ann Arbor – at the time the third in the country – and then the successful statewide ban, which has prevented mercury from contaminating Great Lakes fish and the environment. In the last year she spearheaded a project to test diesel school bus exhaust, which has led the Ann Arbor Public Schools to agree to install emission control devices on their buses. Mary Beth also spearheaded a campaign called CLEAN to win municipal and University purchasing of chlorine-free paper, and worked on many initiatives to reduce the use of toxic pesticides in schools, neighborhoods, and by municipalities.

Mary Beth served as a member of the Ann Arbor Environmental Commission, the Board of Directors of the Michigan Environmental Council, two workgroups of the international Health Care Without Harm Campaign, and many other bodies. She held a Masters of Public Health Degree from the University of Michigan. She is widely known and respected by policymakers and regulators in Michigan as well as activists and community leaders throughout the country. At the same time, she never took anything or anyone too seriously, and occasionally performed as a giant raindrop in skits done in area schools to teach kids about water quality and conservation. Whatever she devoted herself to, she shared with the rest of us in a way that made us happier people. Her jokes were better because no one ever got hurt. While we grieve our tremendous loss, we are grateful for the better world she gave us.

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