Dr. Balmes received his M.D. degree from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1976. After internal medicine training at Mount Sinai and pulmonary subspecialty, occupational medicine, and research training at Yale, he joined the faculty of USC in 1982. He joined the faculty at UCSF in 1986 and is currently Professor and Division Chief of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). His major academic activities include his research laboratory, several collaborative epidemiological research projects, various advisory and editorial committees, and direction of the clinical occupational/environmental medicine division at SFGH.

Research Interests
Dr. Balmes' laboratory, the Human Exposure Laboratory (HEL), has been studying the respiratory health effects of various air pollutants for the past 18 years. Recently, the HEL has been focusing on the airway inflammatory effects of ozone, secondhand tobacco smoke, and wood smoke. The HEL was the first group to demonstrate a) histological evidence of ozone-induced airway injury and inflammation in human subjects, b) that asthmatic subjects have greater inflammatory responses to ozone than normal subjects, c) that ozone-induced inflammatory responses in normal subjects attenuate with short-term exposures on consecutive days in the lung, and d) that asthmatic subjects recruit macrophages to the airways with consecutive day exposures. The lab is currently studying the impact of a genetic polymorphism of the antioxidant enzyme, Glutathione-S-transferase M1, on the susceptibility of asthmatic subjects to ozone. We are also studying the relationship of acute airway inflammatory responses to acute cardiovascular responses after both ozone and secondhand tobacco smoke.

Dr. Balmes is also collaborating on several epidemiological projects. One such project is called the "Fresno Asthmatic Children's Environment Study" (FACES). The overall specific aim of FACES is to determine the relationship between air pollution-induced short-term exacerbations of childhood asthma and the longer-term course of asthma. A cohort of 250 asthmatic children (ages 6-11) is being followed longitudinally with serial measurements of lung function and assessment of asthma severity (symptoms, medication use) as well as serial measurement of both indoor and outdoor exposures. A second project (CRECER) involves longitudinal study of the effects of biomass smoke exposure on chronic respiratory health of ~500 young children in rural Guatemala. A third line of research involves the effects of arsenic in drinking water on lung health in both Bangladesh and Chile.  Yet another project involves the effect of chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide on lung function in Rotorua, NZ.