Lloyd Barton Tepper, former FDA associate commissioner and retired professor at Penn medical school, has died at 93
He spent 21 years as corporate medical director for Trexlertown-based Air Products and Chemicals Inc., and conducted groundbreaking research on the workplace environment.
Lloyd Barton Tepper, 93, of Montgomery County, retired corporate medical director for Trexlertown-based Air Products and Chemicals Inc., former adjunct professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, onetime associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, writer, editor, and mentor, died Wednesday, Jan. 29, of cardiorespiratory arrest at his home.
As an expert in occupational and environmental medicine, Dr. Tepper spent 21 years, from 1976 to 1997, as corporate medical director for Air Products and Chemicals. He conducted groundbreaking research on the workplace environment for the international company, evaluated the data it produced, and introduced innovative medical policies at company locations across the country and abroad.
He looked for toxic substances, such as lead and asbestos, and dangerous situations that could affect workers on the job, and clarified company medical policy when controversies arose. “We have an obligation to determine which data are significant to human health,” he said in a 2017 interview with Harvard Medicine magazine. “We must ask what the data mean, and interpret them in a way that creates knowledge that goes beyond the numbers. We truly need knowledge. Data in action.”
A former colleague said in an online tribute: “He would often take complex medical concepts and put them into language that anyone could understand.”
In the 1980s, he was at the forefront of workplace policy during the AIDS epidemic and said in a panel discussion on local TV: “It has no relationship to a person’s ability to do a job. A virus carrier is not a hazard to the safety of his fellow workers or to the product.”
He spoke at industry conferences and represented the company at community meetings. He championed a holistic approach to workplace wellness and supported off hours activities that kept colleagues connected.
He especially liked the idea of group workouts. “There is nothing like sweating together in the fitness center to break down barriers,” he told the Morning Call of Allentown in 1990.
He evaluated workplaces around the world and said in an autobiographical profile that it is believed that he “was the only American physician to have inspected an Algerian hospital accompanied by a soldier with a Kalashnikov.”
Dr. Tepper retired from Air Products and Chemicals in 1997 but stayed busy until 2020 as an adjunct professor of occupational and environmental medicine for residents at Penn. In online tributes, former students called him “admirable and inspiring” and “a walking reference library of occupational medicine and industrial hygiene, domestic and global.”
Earlier, from 1965 to 1972, he was a professor of environmental health and associate director of the Kettering Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati.
He lived in Washington as an associate commissioner of the FDA from 1972 to 1976 and spent four years in the 1960s at the Atomic Energy Commission. He also served as vice chair and trustee of the American Board of Preventive Medicine, president of what is now the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and a director for the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology.
“I will always treasure his leadership example as well as the vast wealth of knowledge and experience, and the impact it has had on my career.”
He was interested in writing and language, and wrote many papers and chapters for books that were published. He edited the ABPM’s medical certification examinations for 20 years and was editor of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine for 13 years.
In 2021, he earned Dartmouth College’s career achievement award. “Dr. Tepper was a giant in his field,” officials at the American Board of Preventive Medicine said in a tribute, “known as a gentleman scholar with a keen wit and enthusiasm for both learning and teaching.”
Lloyd Barton Tepper was born Dec. 21, 1931, in Los Angeles. He left Southern California for New Hampshire after high school and earned a bachelor’s degree with honors at Dartmouth in 1954.
He earned a medical degree and doctorate of science from Harvard University Medical School, and used a four-year fellowship to do clinical work at Massachusetts General Hospital, research the nature and effects of beryllium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and complete a residency at the Harvard School of Public Health.
He met Lamonte Leverage while he was in medical school, and they married in 1957. They had sons Jeffrey and Clo and lived for years in Allentown. He enjoyed gardening, told interesting stories, and could fix practically anything around the house.
In 1976, Dr. Tepper was recognized for his commitment to public accountability when the Cleveland Plain Dealer published a story about his “persistent honesty in the face of all odds.” He had returned several payments for medical services he did not render for the Ohio state government, and shined a light on the bureaucracy’s mistakes.
“If you are looking for an honest man, a persistently honest man,” said the Morning Call, which reported the story locally, “try Dr. Tepper.”
“A bon vivant, he had the unique gift of making those around him both happier and wiser.”
His son Clo said: “He loved teaching. He was quiet and modest. But people called him a giant in his field.”
In addition to his wife and sons, Dr. Tepper is survived by other relatives. A brother died earlier.
A private service is to be held later.