UCLA scientist makes an impact on public health

It’s a long way from the small town of Carpi in Northern Italy to the UCLA campus where John Froines has made his professional home for the last 34 years. But when Carpi’s mayor presented the Fielding School professor emeritus with the prestigious 2013 Collegium Ramazzini Award for his contributions in occupational and environmental health research and policy, it illustrated the long reach and worldwide recognition of Froines’ body of work. Over the course of a four-decade-plus career in the field of toxicology and exposure assessment, Froines has played an important role in some of the most seminal evidence-based policies to protect human health — from developing the federal standards for lead and cotton dust exposure  in the late 1970s to identifying diesel exhaust as a toxic air contaminant 20 years later. His work didn’t end there. In 2013, he co-authored a case study on California’s process for assessing risk and approving the use of methyl iodide as a fumigant for crops such as strawberries. That report, issued by the UCLA Fielding School-based Sustainable Technology and Policy Program, pointed out a failure in the system in approving a chemical that a Froines-chaired committee concluded could not be used safely at any level. Throughout his career, Froines has gone up against powerful economic interests in his efforts to translate science into policies that protect the health of some of the most vulnerable populations — migrant farmworkers, blue-collar em...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news