Donald Milton

About Donald Milton
Dr. Milton received BS in Chemistry from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, his MD from Johns Hopkins University and his DrPH (Environmental Health) from Harvard University. He trained in medicine at Emory and Boston Universities and Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Harvard. He joined the Harvard School of Public Health Faculty in 1990 and was appointed Professor in University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Health and Environment in 2005. He is board certified in internal and occupational medicine and has 20 years experience in an occupational medicine referral practice in central Massachusetts. He teaches courses on aerobiology, toxicology, indoor air quality, respiratory epidemiology, physiology, pathology, pathophysiology. He is currently Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Occupational and Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health, Lecturer on Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Attending Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Milton is a past chair of the ACGIH Bioaerosols committee and a member of the committee since 1988. He is chair of the external advisory board for the UTMB Environmental Health Science Center, Galveston, TX. He is a member of the editorial boards of Applied Environmental Microbiology (impact factor 4.00) and Indoor Air (impact factor 2.89). He was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality in 2008. He is chair of the IRB for the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Dr. Milton directs the Aerobiology Biomarkers Laboratory, engaged in NIH funded multidisciplinary investigations of the health effects of bioaerosols. There are three major areas of research in Dr. Milton’s laboratory: 1) the relationship of asthma onset and exacerbation to exposure to allergens and microbial products, 2) prevention of airborne infection, and 3) exhaled breath analysis. His asthma research ranges from studies of occupational asthma to the impact of ambient bioaerosols on asthma exacerbation. A major focus is the impact of low level, early life endotoxin exposure on the risk of childhood allergy and asthma. Work on mechanisms and prevention of airborne infection transmission ranges from productivity effects of rhinovirus colds in office workers and asthmatic children, to methods for preventing airborne communicable infection – particularly influenza and agents of biological warfare and terrorism. Exhaled breath analysis is a unifying theme with ongoing work on exhaled gas and particle phase biomarkers for lung inflammation and studies of exhaled particles as the vehicle of airborne communicable disease transmission.