Alumni Gazette

Clearing the Air

Samet

The first thing to know about Jonathan Samet ’70M (MD) is that, contrary to many news reports about his work, he doesn’t take credit for coining the phrase “secondhand smoke.”

But the widely recognized expert on air pollution has been influential in how people think about tobacco’s health effects—among smokers and nonsmokers alike—and for laying the groundwork for air quality control in the United States.

In recognition of his contributions to understanding air pollution and health, Samet, the head of the epidemiology department at Johns Hopkins University, last winter received the Prince Mahidol Award, an international honor presented by the royal family of Thailand to recognize achievements in medicine, public health, and social services.

Samet, who joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins in 1994, is credited with some of the first studies on secondhand smoke and children’s health published more than 25 years ago, as well as two decades’ worth of writing and editing U.S. Surgeon Generals’ reports. He says a misattribution in The New York Times pegged him as the originator of “secondhand smoke.”

More recently he has been studying a wide range of pollutants, and says results of efforts to clean the air are mixed.

“With regard to air pollution, we’re moving forward and backward,” Samet says. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve had cleaner skies, but there’s rising evidence that day-to-day pollution is adversely affecting people’s health.”

The main offenders, he says, are motor vehicles, and, in the northeastern part of the United States, power plants.

“We haven’t found a level of pollutants that’s safe for public health, and that’s a bind for regulations,” Samet says. “The question is, What do we do now? We need new technology.”

—Jayne Denker