John
Froines
Professor,
Environmental Health Sciences
UCLA School of Public Health
John Froines Bio from UCLA Website
Professor (Environmental Health Sciences), joined the faculty of the School of
Public Health in 1981. He received a B.S. in chemistry from UC Berkeley (l963),
a M.S. in chemistry (1964) and Ph.D. in physical-organic chemistry (1967) from Yale
University. Before coming to the UCLA School of Public Health, Dr. Froines served
as Director of Toxic Substances at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Deputy Director of the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Froines is currently the Director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental
Health and he co-directs the UCLA Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center.
Dr. Froines' area of expertise is Toxicology and Industrial Hygiene. His research interests are in the qualitative and
quantitative characterization of risk factors in occupational disease, with special emphasis on exposure assessment and hazard
surveillance research; the use of genetic toxicology, biomarkers and toxicokinetics in the study of chemical carcinogenesis;
and studies on the carcinogeneity of arsenic and chromium and the toxicity of lead.
Paul Simon
MD, MPH,
Director of Health Assessment and Epidemiology, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services
Dr. Simon is the Director of the Office of Health Assessment and Epidemiology at the Los Angeles County Department of Health
Services and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health. He received his MD from the University of Michigan Medical School and his MPH
in Epidemiology from the UCLA School of Public Health. He completed a residency
in Pediatrics at the Kaiser Sunset Medical
Center in Los Angeles and was a staff
pediatrician at Kaiser. He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer
with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was a Medical Epidemiologist in CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention
prior to assuming his current position. Dr. Simon is board certified in both
Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine.
Jean Ospital, DR.P.H.
Health Effects
Officer
South Coast Air Quality Management District
Bio-sketch
Jean Ospital joined the South Coast AQMD as
the Health Effects Officer in May, 2000. He has over 20 years of technical and
managerial experience working on environmental problems in the private, governmental, and academic sectors.
Ospital works to identify air toxics and methods for reducing emissions then
reports his findings to the AQMD Governing Board and staff. Key areas he focuses
on are health issues stemming from diesel, particulate matter, and air toxics. He
also works with other government agencies on studies on air pollution and its effects on health.
Previously, he has held positions in the
Environmental Affairs and Research and Development Divisions of Southern California Edison, as a consultant in environmental
health, and on the research faculty at UCLA where he taught and conducted research on the health effects of air pollutants
on lung biochemistry
Dr. Ospital has extensive experience in applying technical information to the
regulatory process of developing and complying with environmental regulations. He
has served in numerous capacities working on environmental issues and regulations at both the national and state levels.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University
of California, Santa Barbara. He holds both a master’s degree in Public Health, Health Education and Behavioral
Sciences, as well as a doctorate in Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles. He spent a year between earning his degrees as a health educator with the Peace Corps
in El Salvador.
Bill
Piazza
Los Angeles Unified School District
Office
of Environmental Health and Safety
Biography
Mr.
Bill Piazza has more than 20 years of experience in the field of environmental health and safety with particular expertise
in both air dispersion modeling and health risk assessments. As an Environmental
Assessment Coordinator with the Los Angeles Unified School District, Mr. Piazza has completed more than 200 risk and hazard assessment studies. To date, he has characterized and modeled the contaminant emissions of more than 2,000 commercial and industrial
operations.
Mr. Piazza has participated in the drafting of several environmental regulations including Public Resources Code Section
21151.8 and Education Code Section 17213 which require school districts to evaluate the impacts of sitting schools within
close proximity to facilities that emit toxic air contaminants.
Mr. Piazza has also performed private consultative services to clients such as MCA and Disney Development Companies,
the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), Corporation for Clean Air (CCA), Safe Action for the Environment (SAFE) and the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment (SCOPE). Mr. Piazza has provided services as a subcontractor to other consulting firms to assess
the impact of both process and fugitive emissions associated with projects prepared under the auspices of the California Environmental
Quality (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Acts (NEPA).
Mr. Piazza has consulted with members of the Los Angeles, El Segundo and Huntington Park city councils, as well as
members of the City of Santa Monica Airport Commission, to address issues related to air toxic emissions.
Mr. Piazza has lectured for
several health and hazard assessment classes conducted under the auspices of the University of California, Los Angeles and
the University of Southern California and made several presentations to the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Southern
California Society for Risk Analysis, California’s Coalition for Adequate School Housing and Coalition for Clean Air
on community-based risk and exposures to both criteria pollutants and toxic air contaminants.
Mr. Piazza participated as
a member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) Localized Significance Threshold Working Group
which developed an assessment tool to assist lead agencies in the analysis of air pollution impacts at the local scale. Mr. Piazza was also a member of SCAQMD’s MATES II external peer review group
responsible for evaluating the agency’s technical methodology and implementation plan to characterize ambient levels
and “hot spot” concentrations of toxic compounds throughout the South Coast Air Basin.
Mr. Piazza additionally participated as a member of the California Air Resources Board’s
(ARB) Risk Management Subcommittee and Risk Characterization Technical Group responsible for developing statewide assessment
methodologies to assess the generation and associated impact of diesel emissions on sensitive receptor populations. Mr. Piazza
is currently a member of ARB’s Community Health Modeling Working Group which is responsible for developing guidelines
for the assessment and mitigation of air pollution impacts at the neighborhood scale.
Mr. Piazza’s assessment work has also been featured in journal articles published by Environment
and Planning C: Government and Policy 2002 and the Journal of Environmental Health.
Sara
Amir
California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control
Sara Amir is the Chief of the Southern California Cleanup Operations at the California
environmental Protection Agency, Department of Toxic Substances Control. Her job is to ensure that toxic site cleanups are
protective of human health and the environment and conducted according to the federal and state environmental standards. Sara
has a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology and a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from University
of Southern California. Sara has worked for the California Environmental Protection
Agency since 1984.
Susan L. Mearns, Ph.D.
Santa Monica Task
Force on the Environment
Mearns
Consulting Corp.
Short Biography
Dr. Mearns earned her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Kansas.
Her area of expertise is environmental toxicology.
She has been an environmental consultant for 22 years and a member of the Santa Monica Task Force on the Environment for
8 years.
Her range of experience includes preparing risk assessments for large projects such as base closings, smaller projects
such as Brownfields redevelopment sites and expert witness testimony.
Michael
Jerrett, PhD
Associate
Professor
Division
of Biostatistics
Department
of Preventive Medicine and
Department
of Geography
University of Southern California
PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY: MICHAEL
LEO BRENNAN JERRETT
Michael Jerrett holds an associate professorship in the Division of Biostatistics, Department of Preventive Medicine,
University of Southern California, Los
Angeles, and an adjunct associate professorship in the School
of Geography and Geology, the Health Studies Program, and the Institute
of Environment and Health, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Canada. He also holds adjunct
or courtesy appointments in the Department of Geography, University of Southern
California, Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, University
of Ottawa, and the Population Health PhD Program, School
of Veterinary Medicine, University of
Guelph. He completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in Environment and Health
at McMaster University in 1997, under
the supervision of Dr. John Eyles. In 1996, he earned his PhD in Environmental Geography from the University
of Toronto (supervisor: Dr. A.P. Lino Grima). From 1988-91 he worked for the Ontario
Ministry of the Environment and other agencies as an environmental planner and policy analyst. He was the first to graduate
from the collaborative MA in Political Science and Environmental Studies at the University
of Toronto in 1987. In 1986, he graduated with a BSc on the Dean’s Honour
list from Trent University’s Environmental
and Resource Science program.
He specializes in Medical Geography
and in the spatial statistical analysis of environment-health relationships. His recent work focuses on air pollution-health
associations in the United States and Canada,
with special reference to geographic exposure models and the role of social-spatial effect modifiers. He also pursues research
in environmental accounting focusing on the valuation of environmental costs and benefits as well as the determinants of environmental
and health expenditures. Dr. Jerrett has designed and analyzed local, provincial, state, and national level health and environment
databases in Canada, the United
States, Mexico, China,
the Netherlands, and Vietnam.
He has published or has works forthcoming
in leading journals such as American Journal of Epidemiology, Environmental Health Perspectives, Journal of Epidemiology
and Community Health, Epidemiology, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Social Science and Medicine, The
International Journal of Health Services, Environment and Planning A, Land Economics, The Professional
Geographer, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. His peer-reviewed funding sources
include the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the
National Centre for Excellence in Geomatics, Health Canada,
the U.S. Health Effects Institute (HEI), the California Air Resources Board, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, and the U.S. National Institute of Health. Currently he serves as a reviewer for the U.S. National Science
Foundation, HEI, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and
many international journals. He also sits as a review panel member on the CIHR Public, Population and Community Health Committee.
He has delivered invited presentations
at leading health and environment research centres, including the U.S. National Academy of Science, Harvard
University, Johns Hopkins
University, Utrecht University,
the University of Southern California,
University of California at Santa
Barbara, the State University of New York, the University
of Toronto, and the University of British
Columbia. He has been chosen as the 2004 Dangermond Endowed Speaker in Geographic Information
Science, to be delivered at Environmental Research Systems Institute, University
of Redlands, and at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
As university teacher, in 1997 Dr.
Jerrett was nominated for the award of best professor in Science by the McMaster University Student Union (course: Geography
of the United States). He has served on many graduate thesis
committees across diverse disciplines such as Geography, Medicine, Engineering, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Population
Health. He has successfully supervised two MA students and one postdoctoral fellow. He currently has one MSc and on PhD student
in course.
Dr. Jerrett has volunteered for the
United Way Campaign, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Great Lakes Foundation, and most recently as chair of the Health Effects
Committee of Clean Air Hamilton, a collaborative effort between the municipality, the business and labour communities, non-governmental
organizations, and academia to improve air quality in the City of Hamilton.
Martin Rubin
Director
Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution
