Arlene Blum (born March 1, 1945^[1]) is an Americanmountaineer, writer, andenvironmental health scientist. She is best known for leading the first successful American ascent ofAnnapurna (I), a climb that was also an all-woman ascent. She led the first all-woman ascent ofDenali ("Denali Damsels" expedition), and was the first American woman to attemptMount Everest.^[2] She is executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute,^[3] an organization of scientists who develop and communicate peer-reviewed research to develop innovative solutions to reduce the use of toxic chemicals.[1]

Arlene Blum
Arlene Blum at a 1977 fundraiser in Berkeley, CA, for her 1978 climbing expedition
Born	(1945-03-01)March 1, 1945 (age 80) Davenport, Iowa, US
Education	Reed College, BA University of California, Berkeley, PhD
Occupation(s)	Mountaineer, writer, Environmental health scientist
Known for	Leading first American and also all-woman ascent ofAnnapurna Environmental health research
Notable work	Annapurna: A Woman's Place Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life
Children	1
Website	http://www.arleneblum.com

Blum was born inDavenport, Iowa, and raised from the age of five on in Chicago by herOrthodox Jewish grandparents and mother.^[1] In the early 1960s, she attendedReed College inPortland, Oregon. Her first climb was inWashington, where she failed to reach the summit ofMount Adams. However, she persevered, climbing throughout her college and graduate school days. She was rejected from an Afghanistan expedition in 1969, with its leader writing to her, "One woman and nine men would seem to me to be unpleasant high on the open ice, not only in excretory situations but in the easy masculine companionship which is so vital a part of the joy of an expedition."^[4] However, she had been able to go climbing as part of her research for her senior thesis, which was on the topic of volcanic gases onOregon'sMount Hood. In her thesis she predicted that one of the Pacific northwest volcanoes would soon erupt with devastating violence, and 14 years laterMt. St. Helens did have a violent eruption.^[5] Blum graduated from Reed in 1966 and attendedMIT andUC Berkeley, where she earned a PhD inbiophysical chemistry in1971. After graduate school, Blum embarked on what she called the "Endless Winter" – spending more than a year climbing peaks all over the world.^[6]

In 1969, she applied to join an expedition toDenali inAlaska, and was told that women were welcome to come only as far as the base camp to "help with the cooking."[2] Blum then organized and co-led the first all-woman team to ascendDenali in 1970.^[7] Blum participated in the second American effort to climbMount Everest as part of theAmerican Bicentennial Everest Expedition, but did not reach the summit. In 1978, she organized a team of eleven women to climb the tenth highest mountain in the world,Annapurna (I) inNepal which, until then, had been climbed by only eight people (all men). It was calledAmerican Women's Himalayan Expeditions – Annapurna. They raised money for the trip in part by selling T-shirts with the slogan "A woman's place is on top". The first summit team, comprisingVera Komarkova andIrene Miller (now Beardsley) andSherpas Mingma Tsering and Chewang Ringjing, reached the top at 3:30 p.m. on October 15, 1978. The second summit team,Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz andVera Watson, died during their climb. After the event, Blum wrote a book about her experience on Annapurna, calledAnnapurna: A Woman's Place.^[8]

She led the first expedition to climbBhrigupanth in the IndianHimalayas, leading a team of Indian and American women. She then made what she called the "Great Himalayan Traverse", a two-thousand-mile journey adjacent to beautiful peaks of the Himalayas fromBhutan to India with trekerHugh Swift. She and her partner Rob Gomersall crossed theAlps fromYugoslavia to France, bearing their baby Annalise in a backpack.^[9]

As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, Blum predicted the correct three-dimensional structure fortransfer RNA, an essential building block in all organisms, by stringing hippie beads for the nine known tRNA sequences in four colors to represent the four nucleic acid bases, pairing the bases, and folding them into a logical structure.^[10]

While a post doc in the Stanford biochemistry department, she discovered the first physical evidence for intermediate states in the folding of protein molecules^[11] doing "temperature jump NMR," a technique she imagined while watching water melting from a glacier in Central Asia. Her Stanford advisor, RobertBaldwin, stated in his oral history^[12] that this work was a first step towards solving the problem of the mechanism ofprotein folding.

Blum's research with biochemistBruce Ames at the UC Berkeley found that the flame retardant calledTris, used at high levels in most children's pajamas in the middle of the 1970s, was a mutagen and likely carcinogen. Three months after their 1977 paper inScience^[13] was published, children's sleepwear containing Tris was banned in the United States.^[14]

After a 26-year long hiatus, Blum returned to science and policy work in 2006—when her daughter started college—and her memoirBreaking Trail: A Climbing Life^[15] was published. She discovered that the sameTris her research had helped remove from children's pajamas was back in American couches and baby products.^[16]

As a result, Blum founded the Green Science Policy Institute (GSP)^[17] in 2007 to bring scientific research results to decision makers in government and industry to protect human health and the environment from toxic chemicals.[3] Blum and her team collaborate with scientists on policy-relevant research projects and translate scientific information to educate decision makers, the press, and the public. The Institute's work has contributed to many policies and business practices that reduce the use of toxic chemicals, particularlyhalogenated chemicals such asflame retardants,antimicrobials, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).^[18][19]

Her first book,Annapurna: A Woman's Place was included inFortune Magazine's 2005 list of "The 75 Smartest Business Books We Know" and chosen byNational Geographic Adventure Magazine as one of the 100 top adventure books of all time. Her award-winning memoir,Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life tells the story of how Blum realized improbable dreams among the world's highest mountains, in the chemistry laboratory, and in public policy.^[20][21]

Blum has published articles about science policy inThe New York Times,Science magazine,^[22]Los Angeles Times,^[23] andThe Huffington Post.

For her mountaineering accomplishments, Blum was the winner of the Sierra Club'sFrancis P. Farquhar Mountaineering Award for1982. She holds a Gold Medal from theSociety of Woman Geographers,^[24] an honor previously given to only eight other women includingAmelia Earhart,Margaret Mead, andMary Leakey. TheAmerican Alpine Club inducted Blum into its Hall of Mountaineering Excellence^[25] in 2012.

For her science and policy work, Blum won thePurpose Prize in 2008, an award for those over 60 who are solving society's greatest problems. In 2010, theNational Women's History Project selected her as one of "100 Women Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet."^[26] In 2014 she was inducted into the Alameda County Women's Hall of Fame for Science, Engineering andTechnology and received theBenjamin Ide Wheeler Medal as the city of Berkeley's "most useful citizen."[4] In 2015, her alma mater Reed College awarded her the Thomas Lamb Eliot Award for LifetimeAchievement. In 2018 Blum was inducted into theCalifornia Hall of Fame. In 2022, she was granted anhonorary doctorate by the University of San Francisco. 2024 Blum was recognized as one of 50Forbes Sustainability Leaders.

Arlene Blum is the founder of the annual Berkeley Himalayan Fair and the Burma Village Assistance Project. She serves on the board of thePlastic Pollution Coalition.^[27]

• "With a global and virtual expedition team, we are attempting challenging and important mountains and reaching for the summit of a healthier world to benefit us all."^[28]
• "The health and environmental problem from such chemicals could be as threatening as climate change, but I believe it is a problem that can be solved relatively easily. It's a matter of informing the public – and political will."^[28]
• "My new adventure in science and policy work is the most challenging and important of my life and I feel lucky to look out at the horizon and see endless rows of mountains to climb."^[2]
• "In America, foods, drugs and pesticides are regulated, you may say they are not well enough regulated, but you really have to provide information because those are the things that go into our mouths. Other chemicals like flame retardants are not regulated, there are not really health requirements but they go into our bodies the same way."^[29]

Blum lives and works inBerkeley, California. She has a daughter, Annalise Blum, a 2010 graduate ofStanford University in environmental engineering. In 2017 Annalise earned a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Tufts University.^[30] In March, 2023, Annalise was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science in theU.S. Department of the Interior.^[31]

• Arlene Blum official website
• Green Science Policy Institute website
• Purpose Prize Profile
• Article about Arlene Blum inReed College Magazine
• Interview with Arlene Blum forBreaking Trail
• Dashka Slater,"Arlene Blum's Crusade Against Household Toxins",The New York Times, September 9, 2012.
• California Museum profile