In memoriam: Eric W. Mood.

Eric W. Mood, lecturer in public health and an authority in the epidemiology of discomfort and disease from swimming pool water, as well as in the health aspects of housing, passed away December 2004.

He made research contributions in the areas of food sanitation, wastewater treatment, swimming pool standards, drinking-water quality, air pollution, and the health aspects of housing.

Mood was born in Pennsylvania on December 30, 1916. He received a B.S. from the University of Connecticut in 1938 and an M.P.H. from Yale in 1943.

He served in World War II and later retired from the Army Reserve as a colonel. In 1949, while serving as director of the Bureau of Environmental Sanitation for the New Haven Health Department, he returned to Yale to become a lecturer in public health. From 1962 to 1975, Mood was a member of the ladder faculty, and in the mid-1960s was charged with developing a division of environmental health. He succeeded in that endeavor and served as division head. After 1975, he held positions in the voluntary-faculty ranks. Although he officially retired in 1987, he continued to teach for the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health until 1998.

Mood was a member of the World Health Organization Advisory Committee on Environmental Health for 25 years. He also was a long-time member of NEHA and served the association as a member of the Scholarship Committee for many years. According to NEHA President Jim Balsamo, "he always had a unique perspective and keen interest in students' involvement in the environmental health field."

(Adapted, with permission, from the Yale School of Public Health, http://publichealth.yale.edu/news/jan05/mood.html.)