UC Irvine's Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine provides training in Environmental Health Sciences, culminating with the award of the doctor of philosophy degree in one of two tracks, Environmental Toxicology and Exposure Sciences and Environmental Epidemiology, or the master of science degree. The Environmental Health Sciences program grew out of the Environmental Toxicology Graduate Program, which has trained PhD and MS students and postdoctoral scholars for more than 35 years at UC Irvine. The Environmental Health Sciences program provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary and appropriate to teach and/or conduct basic and applied research programs in inhalation/pulmonary toxicology, biochemical neurotoxicology, reproductive and developmental toxicology, exposure modeling, exposure assessment, chemical pathology, toxicokinetics, radiation toxicology, molecular carcinogenesis, environmental epidemiology, and risk assessment.

Environmental Toxicology involves the scientific study of the entry, distribution, biotransformation and mechanism of the action of chemical agents that are harmful to the body. The graduate program interprets environmental toxicology as the study of the effects and mechanisms of action of hazardous chemicals in food, air, water and soil in the home, the workplace and the community. It considers experimentally and theoretically such diverse research problems as:

• New scientific approaches to toxicological evaluation of environmental chemicals such as air and water pollutants, food additives, industrial wastes and agricultural adjuvants at the molecular, cellular and organism levels;
• Mechanisms of action in chemical toxicity;
• The molecular pathology of tissue injury in acute and chronic toxicity.

Exposure Sciences involves the study of human exposures to environmental contaminants in different media such as air, water, and food and via multiple routes including inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption. Environmental Epidemiology examines the effects of exposure to environmental pollutants and other factors on health outcomes. Research in the Exposure Sciences and Environmental Epidemiology Track includes:

• New approaches to the evaluation of human exposures to environmental chemicals, including exposure modeling and biomonitoring.
• Modeling individual level exposures to environmental pollutants and examining associations of these exposures with health and disease outcomes.
• Exposure to physical and psychosocial work environment hazards and health outcomes