Donald K. Milton, MD

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 previously served on the faculties of Harvard School of Public Health Faculty and the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Health and Environment. He is currently Professor and Director of the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland School of Public Health, College Park, MD and Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Occupational and Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health,. He is board certified in internal and occupational medicine and has 20 years experience in an occupational medicine referral practice. He teaches courses on environmental and occupational hygiene, aerobiology, toxicology, indoor air quality, respiratory epidemiology, physiology, pathology, pathophysiology. 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 a member of the external advisory board for the UTMB Environmental Health Science Center, Galveston, TX and of the editorial boards of Applied Environmental Microbiology, Indoor Air, and BMC Public Health. He was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Indoor Air Quality and Climate in 2008.

Dr. Milton leads multidisciplinary investigations of the health effects of bioaerosols with three major themes: 1) the relationship of asthma onset and exacerbation to exposure to allergens and microbial products, 2) investigation and prevention of airborne infection transmission, and 3) exhaled breath analysis. His asthma research includes studies of occupational asthma and the impact of ambient bioaerosols on asthma exacerbation, especially the impact of low level, early life endotoxin exposure on the risk of childhood allergy and asthma. His research on mechanisms and prevention of airborne infection transmission includes productivity effects of rhinovirus colds in office workers and asthmatic children, mathematical models, and laboratory and epidemiological studies of control methods for 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.