John Froines PhD

PSR-LA is proud to honor John Froines with the Environmental Health Award for courageous commitment to scientific integrity and for of increasing our understanding of the health impacts of toxic chemicals on the health of workers and communities.

Many PSR-LA members will recall Froines as a member of the Chicago Seven, a group charged and acquitted of inciting violence during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, then and now he continues to speak truth to power. His work for the past four decades has been rooted in his high regard for scientific integrity and making environmental decisions on the best available science. His work has been used in the development of important worker protections, including setting safety standards for lead and cotton dust.

Dr. Froines’ area of expertise is toxicology and exposure assessment. His research interests are in the qualitative and quantitative characterization of risk factors in environmental and occupational health.  Dr Froines headed the scientific review committee for methyl iodide a highly toxic pesticide that was eventually pulled from the U.S. market by its producer.

Froines currently serves as professor of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, which he joined in 1981. He received a B.S. in chemistry from UC Berkeley (1963), M.S. in chemistry (1964) and Ph.D. in physical-organic chemistry (1967) from Yale University. He conducted postdoctoral research at the Royal Institution of Great Britain under Nobel Laureate, Sir George Porter from 1966-68. Before coming to the UCLA School of Public Health, Dr. Froines was Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oregon and later 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 served as the Director of the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health for 25 years and is currently the Director of the Southern California Particle Center and Supersite. He is Associate Director of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and the Director of the UCLA Fogarty Program in Occupational and Environmental Health. He is also Faculty Director of the Sustainable Technology and Policy Program and serves on three advisory committees of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

His current research emphasizes the study of the mechanistic factors in air pollution related health effects and other projects including the toxicity, risk assessment and regulatory activity for methyl iodide, developing new approaches to exposure assessment for multi-component systems, studies of the mechanism of toxicity for chemical agents with emphasis on developing a roadmap to characterize the process from exposure to disease outcome, i.e., upstream to downstream processes, and predictive toxicology.

Dr. Froines chairs the State of California’s Scientific Review Panel; the central review panel at the State level for identifying toxic air contaminants.  He is recipient of numerous awards, including the  South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Award for Promotion of Good Environmental Stewardship and the  California Air Resources Board’s Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award.