The Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (the Center) was established in 1996 to promote environmental health research in Southern California through funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

This consortium of epidemiologists, statisticians, chemists, toxicologists, and molecular biologists collaborate to create an interdisciplinary approach to the study and advancement of research in environmental health. The Center is organized into an Administrative Core, four Research Cores, three Facility Cores and the Community Outreach and Education Program Core. The Center primarily focuses on the application of epidemiologic methods to study the effects of the environment on human health, and how personal factors modify response, especially with regard to the multiethnic populations of California and the Pacific Rim.

Center studies have included improved approaches for assessing exposure to automobile exhaust, toxicologic assessment of toxic air contaminants, and the measurement of particles of all sizes. In one major study, Center investigators are studying 6,000 children living in Southern California who breathe some of the most polluted air in the United States.

The Center’s successful interdisciplinary research among investigators has been key to the development of other environmental health centers and projects in the past five years involving collaboration between USC and UCLA faculty, including the Southern California Particle Center and Supersite, directed by Dr. John Froines and based at UCLA and recent NIEHS funding of a new program project: “Genetics, Air Pollution, and Respiratory Effects in Children,” directed by Dr. John Peters.