Jones on urban air pollution at UNIGE, 22 October, 17h15

[Lucas Mueller]

Dear Colleagues, 

We are delighted to welcome David S. Jones on 22 October for the next event of the Geneva Environmental Lectures, which are organized as part of the SNSF Ambizione project "Avalanches."

David S. Jones (Harvard University)

Particulate Matters: How PM2.5 Became a Cause of Death, and a Matter of Concern

22 October 2025, 17h15-18h45

E712, Bd. Carl-Vogt 66

Abstract

Health experts warn that air pollution causes 8 million deaths each year, making it one of the leading causes of preventable death worldwide. Most of these deaths are attributed to a specific constituent of air pollution—particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5)—and are caused by ischemic heart disease. Both of those claims emerged, in many respects accidentally, from the Harvard Six Cities Study (1973-1993). The concept of PM2.5 was a by-product of choices made by engineers who designed the study’s air samplers. The importance of heart disease mortality in adults was a secondary finding in a study designed to study lung function in children. The knowledge became controversial immediately, because of its potential role in US environmental policy. This talk will examine how the Six Cities Study became a generator of surprises and of regulatory controversies.

 

Bio

David S. Jones is the A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA). He has written on epidemics among American Indians, the history of cardiac therapeutics, and on the threat of air pollution in India and the United States. He has published widely in the New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

Please also save the date for Anna Ahlers' (MPIWG) talk "Demystifying China’s Authoritarian Environmentalism - and Its Local and Global Nuances" on December 8 at 17h15.

We look forward to seeing many of you in about three weeks.

Kind regards,

Lucas Müller 

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Lucas Mueller, PhD
Collaborateur Scientifique II

SNSF-Ambizione-Fellow

Université de Genève

Département de Géographie et environnement
Faculté des Sciences de la Société

Boulevard Carl-Vogt 66 (C 309)
CH-1211 Genève 4
+41 22 37 93337

https://avalanche.hypotheses.org