THE FIRST 125 YEARS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND INDUSTRIAL HEALTH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Abstract

During its 125-year history, the department has evolved from being sanitary science to a multi-disciplinary field that relies on sophisticated methods in analytical chemistry, toxicology, epidemiology, genomics, epigenomics and bioinformatics. In spite of the rapid and sometimes dramatic changes in the field, the Department has remained at the forefront in framing the direction of environmental health teaching and research in the United Sates at every stage. For over 125 years, the department provided intellectual scaffolding for important developments in the field of environmental and industrial health and remained a critical component of public health activities in the University of Michigan, the United States, and the world. The department boasts of many “firsts” and major accomplishments:

First course in sanitation offered at the University (1881); First Professorship of Hygiene established in the University (1887); First Hygiene Laboratory in the US opened with Clarence Vaughn as Director (1889); First MS degree in Hygiene and Public Health awarded to Dr. Edna Day (1897); First DrPH Degrees were awarded to Roy M. Pryor and Henry F. Vaughan (1916); Henry F. Vaughan became President of the American Public Health Association (1925), one of four graduates or faculty of the department to head the APHA; Warren A. Cook (1940) became the first of 10 Presidents of the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) to come from the department; the National Sanitation Foundation (now NSF International) was founded at SPH (1944); an elite teaching program in industrial health was launched with $10 million grant from General Motors (1950); the famous Institute of Industrial Health was created (1951); recommendations of an eight-year study on uniform recording of environmental health programs (sanitation services) were adopted by the Michigan Department of Health and implemented in most county health departments in the state (1959); Professor Morton Hilbert contributed to the founding of the first Earth Day (1970); Professor Khalil Mancy and former EHS graduate student Hillel Shuval of Hebrew University begin a series of multimillion-dollar projects in the Middle East, aimed at equitably managing groundwater resources shared by Israelis and Palestinians; dubbed "Water for Peace," these projects involve both Arab and Israeli scientists and are supported by the Ford Foundation, The World Bank, and USAID (1980); the first NSF International Department Chair in Environmental Health Sciences was established (2007). A brief outline of historical developments in environmental and industrial health program at the University of Michigan falls is provided below