School of Public Health and Community Medicine - University of Washington - Autumn 2007

Venetia Runnion. Photo by Mary Levin.

Venetia Runnion of the Field Research and Consultation Group is this year's Distinguished Industrial Hygienist from the Pacific Northwest section of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Before joining our department, Runnion was director of industrial hygiene for the Seattle and Portland offices of Clayton Group Services, where she mentored dozens of beginning professionals. She is the eighth winner of this award from our department. Mike Morgan received the award in 1999, Janice Camp in 2003, and Rick Gleason in 2005. Before that, Tony Horstman, Lee Monteith, Dick Hibbard, and Pete Breysse all received it.

Research Scientist Tim Gould has been appointed to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency's Advisory Council as an at-large member. He has worked for our Northwest Center for Particulate Air Pollution and Health and the Northlake controlled exposure lab.

UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine presented its first Community Service Award for Community Partners to Ofelio Borges and Flor Servin. They are pesticide educators from the Washington State Department of Agri-culture and partners of our Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center.

Ofelio Borges, Pat Wahl (dean of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine), Flor Servin. Photo by Mary Levin.

Professor John Kissel is part of a National Institute for Occupational and Safety and Health (NIOSH) grant with Professor Gerald Kasting of the University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy. The Kissel lab will be developing a theoretical description of chemical decontamination of skin in the context of a larger project that describes dermal absorption using first principles and laboratory data.

Associate Professor Matthew Kiefer's El Proyecto Bienestar (well-being project) received a Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) award from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is under consideration for a communications award from the Robert W. Johnson Foundation.

Professor David Eaton received a Puget Sound Partners for Global Health Pilot Grant. Eaton represented the UW Office of Research at the Western Association of Librarians annual meeting in September to discuss the role of university libraries in fostering policies that encourage open access to the results of federally funded research. In September, he participated in a conference on international policy implications of dioxin at Michigan State University. He also participated in the External Science Advisory Board of the University of Montana Center for Environmental Health Sciences.

Eaton, Terry Kavanagh, and Azure Skye attended the annual meeting of NIEHS center directors in Corvallis, Oregon, in October. In November, their Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health held its 13th annual faculty retreat at the South Campus Center, followed by CEEH's external science advisory board's annual meeting. Former DEOHS faculty member Curt Omiecinski attended as a board member.

Hugh McLoone of Microsoft, a 1990 Master of Science graduate in Industrial Hygiene, won the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's 2007 User Centered Design Award for the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. Associate Professor Peter Johnson participated on the research that developed this product.

Lecturer Rick Gleason made presentations on occupational safety and health to the annual Pulp and Paper Safety Conference, Portland, Oregon; the Land Surveyors Annual Conference, Seattle; and the Timber Operators Council (TOC) regional meeting, Tigard, Oregon. He also made a presentation on "Taking safety home" to the Puget Sound Safety Summit in Seattle.

Research Associate Professor Sally Liu has been active on both sides of the Atlantic. This fall she presented preliminary results from her School Bus Exposure and Health Assessment Study to the Tahoma School Board, in Maple Valley, Washington. She has been working on a long-term air pollution exposure assessment that is part of SAPALDIA, an epidemiologic study of respiratory diseases and allergies in the adult Swiss population. She made a presentation in September to the Swiss Expert Commission for Air Hygiene in Basel, Switzerland, and two presentations in June at the Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Senior Lecturer Chuck Treser received the 2007 John P. Nordin Outstanding Sanitarian Award, presented by the Washington State Environmental Health Association conference in Yakima. Associate Professor Emeritus Jack Hatlen presented the award to Treser. The award recognizes outstanding service to the environmental health profession, as well as a willingness to go above and beyond what is expected.

Also at the WSPHA conference, Treser presented the Cind M. Treser Memorial Student Scholarships, named for his late wife, to Abebe Aberra and Any-Thu Le, both of our undergraduate Environmental Health program.

Treser also attended the 71st National Environmental Health Association conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the CDC Environmental Public Health Leadership Institute in St. Louis, Missouri.

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