An INTERVIEW with Dr. Joel Schwartz
ESI Special Topics,
August 2005
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/airpoll/interviews/JoelSchwartz.html
 ccording
to our Special Topics analysis of air pollution research over
the past decade, the work of Joel Schwartz ranks at #1, with
93 papers cited 2,537 times to date. Four of these papers are
included on our list of the 20 most-cited papers for this
period as well. Dr. Schwartz’s record in the ISI
Essential
Science Indicators
Web product includes 275 papers cited close to a total of
7,000 times to date across multiple fields, including Clinical
Medicine, Environment & Ecology, Biology &
Biochemistry, and Pharmacology & Toxicology. Dr. Schwartz
is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology in the Department
of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health
in Boston, Massachusetts. In the interview below, he talks
about his highly cited work.
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 Why,
in your view, is your work highly cited?
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“There has been an explosion of research on air pollution since I first started, as people discovered there were ways for them to address the question relatively inexpensively.”
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I think I have been able to stay ahead of the curve in finding
important questions to address, such as the different effects of
different types of particles, whether people dying from air
pollution would have died in a few days anyway, thresholds, etc.
What
are the circumstances which led you to your work?
I was interested in research that had public health consequences,
and the potential to improve public health. That lead me to focus on
exposures, such as particulate air pollution and ozone, which were
widespread as opposed to more localized, and on exposures that were
amenable to solution (that is, we know how to control many of these
emissions).
How
would you describe the significance of this work for your field?
I think my work has moved environmental epidemiology
(temporarily) into a focus on air pollution, especially particulate
air pollution, and (less temporarily) into a focus on more
sophisticated methods.
How
much has this research advanced since you first started publishing on
it?
There has been an explosion of research on air pollution since I
first started, as people discovered there were ways for them to
address the question relatively inexpensively.
Where
do you see this research going 10 years from now?
I think the future is in identifying mechanisms, which will
involve gene-by-environment interactions, intermediary markers of
effect, and, potentially, proteomics. The other future is improved
exposure, which will include less expensive personal monitors,
geographic information systems to model spatio-temporal changes in
exposure, etc. And finally, we will start to move from air pollution
to the next big thing in environmental health.
Joel D. Schwartz, Ph.D.
Harvard School of Public Health
Boston, MA, USA
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ESI Special Topics,
August 2005
Citing URL - http://www.esi-topics.com/airpoll/interviews/JoelSchwartz.html
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