I Can Breathe Clearly Now

Thomas A. Cahill, Ph.D., is a professor of physics at the University of California, Davis. His early work at UCLA, in France, and in Davis, California, was in nuclear physics and astrophysics, but he soon began adapting physical techniques to applied problems, especially air pollution. His data in 1973 on the impacts of airborne lead was instrumental in mandating the use of the automotive catalytic converter in California in 1976. He proposed and supported the law to lower sulfur in gasoline in 1977. He spent the following 20 years designing, building, and running the aerosol network to protect atmospheric visibility at U.S. national parks and monuments - now the national IMPROVE program. In 1994, he founded the UC Davis DELTA Group to work in two areas - aerosols and global climate change - for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Additionally his group analyzed aerosols and human health impacts for the California Air Resources Board, American Lung Association, and the Health Effects Task Force for Breathe California of Sacramento Emigrant Trails. Because of this health-related work, a U.S. Department of Energy colleague asked Cahill and his team to evaluate air at the excavation project following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the autumn of 2001. Cahill was one of the first to warn that workers at the site were at risk of serious health threats from the toxic metals in the air they were breathing at the site.