The body as history: on looking at the lungs of miners

Rodney Ehrlich trained in economics at UCT and Oxford before switching to Medicine which he completed at UCT in 1981. He subsequently worked for the National Centre for Occupational Health in Johannesburg where his interest in lung disease in miners was kindled. After training in occupational medicine and epidemiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, he qualified as a specialist in Community Health at UCT in 1992. He has worked in the Occupational Diseases Clinic at Groote Schuur Hospital since 1990, enabling him to combine clinical medicine with public health. His current research interests are in social epidemiology, workers’ health, tuberculosis and other chronic lung disease. He has held adjunct faculty appointments at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York. In 2005 he was awarded a Fellowship by peer review of the College of Public Health Medicine (SA) (Occupational Medicine) and elected to the Collegium Ramazzini, an international college of occupational and environmental health scientists.