By Tomas Connor, retired ISOPP member, former researcher of National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

Thomas (Tom) Connor, PhD recently retired from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) after almost 20 years working as a researcher on topics related to occupational exposure to hazardous drugs.  

Before that, Tom was a faculty member at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and conducted some of the early work on occupational exposure at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.  Tom’s early work focused on evaluation of personal protective equipment for use with chemotherapy drugs and continued with ways to evaluate workplace contamination and exposure of workers to these drugs.  He has published extensively and presented talks worldwide on this topic.  

In 2004 he was the lead author on the NIOSH Alert Preventing Occupational Exposure to Antineoplastic and Other Hazardous Drugs in Health Care Settings and has contributed to a number of professional and governmental guidance documents including USP Chapter 800 Hazardous Drugs-Handling in Healthcare Settings.  In 2008 he received the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Board of Directors’ award for contributions to the practice of pharmacy by a non-pharmacist.  

In 2010 he received the ISOPP Achievement Award along with Robbie McLauchlan and Johan Vandenbroucke for their work in developing the ISOPP Standards of Practice: Safe Handling of Cytotoxics. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Oncology Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutical Technology in Hospital Pharmacy. Tom is currently a guest researcher at NIOSH and continues to be active in issues related ways to protect healthcare workers from exposure to hazardous drugs. Tom is currently writing a book on a local architect and his work in Cincinnati, Ohio where he lives with his wife, Janet.