Harvard School of Public Health - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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The teaching aims of the department are to train specialists in industrial medicine and hygiene, air pollution control, and radiological health. In addition, the department provides support in offering some course work in environmental health concepts for all students. At the present time, students in the department courses come from both the School of Public Health and the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Members of the department staff serve on several important national committees and provide consultation to various industry and government groups. Dr. Silverman and Dr. Williams are each in their second four-year term on the Statutory Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. This com¬ mittee must review all power and test reactors for their safety features in protecting the health and safety of the public.

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T HIS year marks the first in which the department has occupied its space in the new Kresge Center for Environmental Health and Safety. It also is the first time since 1950 that the complete research facilities of the Department have been located in the same building. The Harvard Air Cleaning Laboratory, which for twelve years had been in leased quarters, was moved in January, 1963, to the new pilot plant and adjoining laboratories in the basement. The department offices and laboratories, which were at 55 Shattuck Street, were moved in late August. While the new quarters are most welcome, the staff and the students are suffering some from the debugging” operation which app arently is necessary in any new facility like ours with novel aspects and special equipment. The move also forced the staff to curtail their foreign activities for this year. As in the past, the full-time teaching and research staff of the department is com¬ posed primarily of engineers, physicists and chemists, with a part-time staff from the medical and biological specialties. The Department of Physiology, through the Division of Environmental Hygiene, provides teaching support in the physiologic and toxicologic areas. Dr. Shapiro and Professor Burgess, two members of our staff, also provide part of their time to the Division of Environmental Health and Safety of the University Health Services. Harvard has a faculty, staff, and employee group as large as its student body of nearly 10,000. This combination of students and staff makes it comparable to a large diversified research and development laboratory with a wide variety of potential occupational health problems . For example, over 150 laboratories in the University and its affiliated teaching hospitals use various radioisotopes. This in-house” situation provides an excellent field study opportunity for student observation and training. The department conducts a broad program of research activities. Studies are underway on the control of radioactive hazards associated with nuclear energy processes such as power and test reactors, the use of radioisotopes and methods of detecting radiation in small quantities. Research is also continuing on the control of air pollution from steel making processes, and the behavior of inert and radioactive aerosols. A basic program on evaluation and development of protective respiratory devices is also in progress. A new research program which involves a systems analysis approach to central waste management for urban communities is being developed in cooperation with the Harvard- MIT Center for Urban Studies. It is hoped that this study will lead to a systematic procedu re for disposing of solid wastes which now cause serious air pollution problems in large urban communities. At the present time the department has two research contracts with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and one with the American Iron and Steel Institute. A Department of Physiology research grant from the Public Health Service on deposition of particles in the respiratory tract receives physical sciences support from our staff. 21

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MATERNAL and CHILD HEALTH Dr. William M. Schmidt Professor of Maternal and Child Health and Head of the Department 23