William J Rea MD (1935-2018)

Dr. Bill Rea MD was a cardiothoracic and general surgeon who served on the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School for 45 years. He became keenly interested in the effect of environmental pollutants on human health and eventually  opened and became the Director of the Environmental Health Center Dallas and later the President of the American Environmental Health Foundation. His clinic, EHC-Dallas, was the lead clinic in the world for the treatment of illness resulting from environmental pollutant exposures. He has held numerous academic positions at the University of Texas as well as the First World Professorial Chair of Environmental Medicine at the University of Surrey, Guilford, UK.

He is a past President of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine and the Pan American Allergy Society. He has served on the Science Advisory Board for the Environmental Protection Agency and numerous other advisory panels for the Office of Technology Assessment and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Rea was a prolific teacher and writer, organizing 22 consecutive conferences on environmental toxicant exposures and related conditions called “Man and His Environment” and writing prolifically both publishing over 150 articles in the peer-reviewed medical literature and co-authoring with Kalpana Patel MD “Chemical Sensitivity” (vol. 1-4) and “Reversibility of Chronic Degenerative Disease and Hypersensitivity” (vol. 1-5). He has also published a two volume series with co-author Kalpana Patel MD on EMF exposure: ”Air Pollution and the Electromagnetic Phenomena as Incitants” and “EMF Effects from Power Sources and Electrosmog” both published in 2018 by CRC Press.   

For those of us who knew and worked with him, he was a fearless and tireless leader, a medical genius, and an inspiration for thousands of patients and hundreds of doctors globally. We will carry on his work.