George D. Thurston, ScD

Professor Thurston is the director of the program in exposure assessment and human health effects at the Department of Environmental Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, and is a leading scholar on the effects of air pollution on human health.

His research has focused on the health effects of air pollution in New York City, as well as in cities nationwide and worldwide. In 1987, he published the first research that showed the association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and mortality, as well as the first paper using source apportionment methods to relate specific PM2.5 sources with mortality, especially coal burning.  In New York City, this has included his Backpack Study of the effect of diesel air pollution on children with asthma in the South Bronx.

His research and collaborations in cities around the globe has included a study of the effects of industrial air pollution among children in Cubatao, Brazil. He was also an author of the most recent World Health Organization (WHO) Global Burden of Disease (GBD) report, published in the Lancet in 2012, which provided global estimates of the life years lost due to outdoor fine particulate matter air pollution (PM2.5), which were based in large measure on Dr. Thurston’s ACS cohort studies of PM2.5 air pollution and mortality, and his leading-edge collaborative research in which global PM2.5 concentrations were estimated based on global satellite data.

Dr. Thurston has also been a leader in advancing the intersection of science and public policy decision-making. He has been called upon to testify before the US Senate and the House of Representatives on dozens of occasions to explain the public policy implications of air pollution research, most recently in October 2011 regarding the proposed mercury emission regulations. In 1999, he spoke at the Community of Parties (COP5) Kyoto Protocol meeting held in Bonn, Germany regarding his research on the immediate human health co-benefits of climate change mitigation steps from associated cleaner air quality.

In 2002, he was called upon to testify before the Senate on the human health effects associated with the World Trade Center disaster, in which he took a leadership role in collecting air pollution samples independent of the government and indirectly sharing that information with the community through public forums led by him at NYU and in Lower Manhattan.

He has also served as a member of the U.S. The EPA Clean Air Science Advisory Council (CASAC) advises the EPA Administrator on setting U.S. air quality standards and has served on a National Academy of Science advisory committee on the environmental aspects of Waste Incineration. As a result of these activities, he has been frequently interviewed by the networks and the press, most recently on CNN International, regarding the increasing problem of air pollution in Beijing, China. He has provided consistent leadership in his scientific organizations, and his research has been honored for its excellence by the scientific community.

In May 2003, he organized and hosted the U.S. EPA-supported international meeting: Workshop on the Source Apportionment of PM Health Effects. In 2004, he co-hosted the annual International Society of Environmental Epidemiology meeting at the NYU Kimmel Center in Washington Square. In 2012, Prof. Thurston was awarded the prestigious Haagen Smit Prize by the scientific journal Atmospheric Environment, and in 2018, he was awarded the American Thoracic Society’s Public Service Award.

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