Dr. John Alan Haines, 1938-2026: A Life of Science, Service and Friendship

Dr. John Alan Haines, a pioneering figure in international environmental protection, chemical safety and poisoning prevention, died on 7 July 2026 at a retirement home in Challex, France. He had recently turned 88.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, John contributed to the development of international policies and practical systems addressing air pollution, industrial environmental management, chemical safety, toxic exposures and poison control. Yet the importance of his work cannot adequately be measured through the senior positions he held, the international meetings he attended or the many technical publications he produced. His greatest achievement was his ability to turn scientific knowledge and international cooperation into practical institutions that protected people and saved lives.

John was born in Coventry, United Kingdom, on 25 June 1938. He studied at Imperial College, University of London, before undertaking doctoral research at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, under the distinguished organic chemist and Nobel laureate Lord Alexander Todd. His research focused on nucleic-acid chemistry.

Following Cambridge, John received a Royal Society-Soviet Academy of Sciences Exchange Fellowship and worked at the Soviet Academy's Research Institute for Natural Product Chemistry with Professor N.K. Kochetkov. At a time when exchanges of this kind took place across significant political and ideological divisions, the experience reflected both John's scientific ability and the international outlook that would characterize his entire life. He subsequently became a Research Fellow in Medicine at Harvard University, working at Massachusetts General Hospital with Professor Paul C. Zamecnik on protein biosynthesis.

In 1967, John joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, ultimately in the position of Principal Administrator of its Environment Directorate. Initially working in science policy, he soon became closely involved in the OECD's emerging environmental activities and contributed to work on air pollution, chemicals and pesticides, water, transport, energy and the environmental consequences of industrial development.  

John was involved in some of the earliest OECD work leading to international action on mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls and cadmium, as well as the foundations of the organization's chemicals-management programme. He also directed pioneering studies of the environmental consequences of energy use and industrial activity and contributed to the early international investigation of transboundary air pollution and acid rain. These were emerging issues at the time, but they would become central elements of international environmental policy.

In 1976, at the request of UNEP's first Executive Director, Maurice Strong, John was seconded to the United Nations Environment Programme's Industry and Environment Office in Paris. There, he assisted in building a consultative relationship among governments, industry, trade associations, workers' organizations, scientists and international institutions. He worked across numerous industrial sectors, including chemicals, petroleum, metals, motor vehicles, transportation, tourism and agro-industries, promoting practical approaches to reducing the environmental consequences of industrialization.

His UNEP work ranged from international programme coordination to direct technical assistance. He continued work on the measurement of transboundary air pollution; advised on efforts to address severe air pollution in Mexico City; and served on a UNEP environmental-impact advisory team following the catastrophic 1979 blowout of the Ixtoc-1 oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. He also served as Secretary of the Committee of International Development Institutions on the Environment, which sought to translate environmental policies into the operating practices of major multilateral development and financing institutions.

Building poison-control capacity

It was through the World Health Organization, however, that John undertook what may have been the most consequential work of his life.

From 1983 until 2000, he worked with the International Programme on Chemical Safety and later headed WHO's Poisoning Prevention and Treatment Unit. Among his responsibilities, John developed and drove a programme to assist developing countries and countries with economies in transition in establishing poison-control centres and related toxicological services. Although international in scope, much of the work focused on countries in Africa and Asia where little or no organized poison-information or emergency-response capacity had previously existed.

The brilliance of the programme lay in its simplicity and practicality. During the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet gave clinicians immediate access to vast bodies of medical information, a functioning poison-control centre could be established with comparatively modest resources. It required suitable office space; a dependable telephone line; filing cabinets filled with carefully organized and readily accessible information on poisons, toxic exposures, antidotes and treatment; medically qualified and properly trained staff; and a poison-control hotline whose number was widely publicized among hospitals, doctors, emergency services and the general public.

John understood that an effective response did not always require a large, elaborate or expensive institution. What mattered was that accurate information and trained medical expertise were available immediately when a poisoning occurred. In such emergencies, the difference between uncertainty and informed action could also be the difference between life and death.

With development-assistance funding amounting to only a few million United States dollars - much of it provided by the Government of the United Kingdom and other developed country donors - John's efforts resulted in the creation of dozens of poison-control centres and related facilities. In many participating countries, these were the first services of their kind.

The centres assisted doctors treating children who had swallowed toxic household products; agricultural workers exposed to pesticides; employees involved in industrial chemical accidents; and patients poisoned by medicines, contaminated food, natural toxins or other hazardous substances. They also enabled countries to begin systematically documenting poisoning cases, identifying recurring risks, improving public-health preparedness and developing national expertise in toxicology.

This work was reinforced by John's leadership of the IPCS INTOX Project, which brought together more than 100 professionals in poison control and related fields. The initiative developed internationally evaluated information for the diagnosis and treatment of poisoning, standardized formats and terminology for recording toxic exposures, information-management tools, training materials and networks connecting poison centres and specialists across countries.

John also led work on antidotes, the harmonization of poisoning case data and preparedness for major chemical incidents. He assisted in establishing a WHO collaborating centre for an international clearing house on major chemical incidents and catalysed the creation of poison-control facilities, laboratories and clinical services in numerous countries. In 1989, he played a central role in establishing the Asian and Pacific Association of Medical Toxicology, which developed into an enduring professional network.

The impact was profound. John's work did not merely result in reports, recommendations or meetings. It placed a telephone within reach of a doctor confronting an unfamiliar poisoning, provided that doctor with reliable information and connected national medical personnel to a wider international community of expertise. His efforts directly contributed to saving thousands of lives.

Many of the centres and professional systems he assisted in establishing continue to operate. Their ongoing work means that John's legacy is not confined to history. It remains active each time a clinician receives the information needed to treat a poisoned patient, each time a toxic exposure is prevented and each time a national health service responds more effectively to a chemical emergency.

Despite the extraordinary and enduring impact of this achievement, John was never accorded formal recognition by WHO (some administrative changes had taken place close to his retirement), the United Nations system or any other institution commensurate with the scale of his contribution. There appears to have been no major award, institutional commendation or official tribute acknowledging that his work had assisted in creating poison-control capacity across dozens of developing countries and had directly contributed to saving so many lives.

That absence of recognition is striking. Yet the poison-control centres, professional networks and practical systems John assisted in establishing constitute a far more meaningful memorial than any medal or formal distinction could provide.

Strengthening international chemical safety

John also contributed to the wider international architecture for the sound management of chemicals. He was involved in the preparations for the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development and in the intergovernmental processes that led to the establishment of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety and the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals.

He represented WHO in numerous inter-agency mechanisms and assisted countries in developing national programmes, setting priorities and strengthening their capacity to manage chemicals safely. He worked with governments and institutions in every region of the world and authored or edited important guidance on poison control, analytical toxicology, chemical incidents, antidotes and the treatment of poisoning.

After taking early retirement from the OECD and reaching WHO's compulsory age of separation in 2000, John continued his international service as a Senior Special Fellow at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in Geneva. At UNITAR, he assisted developing countries in preparing national chemicals-management profiles, developing action plans, implementing the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, and fulfilling priorities associated with the Stockholm Convention and the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management.

His assignments took him throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe. Even in nominal retirement, John continued doing what he had always done: connecting scientific knowledge, international institutions and national authorities in order to produce practical improvements on the ground.

A modern-day bon vivant

John's professional seriousness was accompanied by an immense appetite for life. He was a true modern-day bon vivant: generous, sociable, multilingual, curious and endlessly interested in people.

He was famous among his friends for his hospitality. When he was at home, he regularly opened his house in Divonne-les-Bains for tremendous dinner parties, soirees and other gatherings. These events seemed at times almost continuous. His home became a meeting place for an extraordinarily diverse community of friends, colleagues, scientists, diplomats, church members and travellers drawn from many countries and backgrounds. For a place, such as Geneva, where professionals and others come from all over the world and build lives here far from their families, John filled this vacuum by opening his doors to one and all.

John gave generously not only of his home and table, but also of his time, attention and friendship. He had a gift for bringing people together and for maintaining relationships across great distances and over many decades. His Annual Letters (sent early in the new year) were famous, full of details of his travels and other activities. Literally hundreds, if not thousands of persons were on his distribution list. To be mentioned in his letter was a true honour!

He was, however, rarely at home for very long. John was an exceptionally avid - one might almost say compulsive - traveller. He visited more than 130 countries during his lifetime, both through his international duties and through his own journeys. Travel was not simply an occupational requirement. It was one of the central passions of his life and an expression of his deep curiosity about other societies, cultures and people. Attending weddings around the world – John attended more weddings than one thought possible in a lifetime – was another driver of his extensive travel (in 2001, for example, he and his niece attended both my wedding in Bogotá AND our post-wedding celebration in Canada!).

John was also passionate about classical music. Attending classical music and opera festivals annually all over Europe folded perfectly into John’s passion for travel. Rare was the year when John, often accompanied by his dearest companion Anand Tiwari and/or his sister Catherine would be absent from Aix-en-Provence, Wexford, Bayreuth or other grand events. Even in his retirement home, he had his radio permanently tuned to classical music stations and even watched an entire opera on television when he got sick of the bad news being broadcast on BBC or TF1 or France2.

India occupied a particularly important place in his affections. He visited the country countless times and developed profound personal and professional connections there.

Faith was another important dimension of John's identity. He was an avid churchgoer and participated in both English- and French-speaking Protestant congregations in the Pays de Gex. He worshipped with La Cote Anglican Church and the Église Protestante Unie du Pays de Gex at the churches in Divonne-les-Bains (which they share) and Ferney-Voltaire (EPU PdG).

For John, participation in church life was not restricted to worship. It provided fellowship, community and another setting in which lasting friendships could grow. Some of the people closest to him entered his life through his church and related activities.

Those who survive him

Above all, John is survived by his friend and companion (including travel companion) of many decades, Dr. Anand Tiwari of India. Through Anand's extraordinary devotion and care during the later years of John's life, as his health and mobility declined, John was able to retain his independence, continue travelling and socializing, and live life almost to the fullest despite his growing infirmities. Their enduring companionship was the most important relationship of John's life and a profound expression of loyalty, affection and selfless care.

Special mention should also be made of Matthew Kahane, a close and dear friend who also assisted immeasurably during John’s final years.

John is also survived by his beloved sister, Catherine Naya, of Coventry, his niece, Claire, also of Coventry; his nephews, Adam, of Coventry, and Chris, of New Zealand; and Claire's sons, Caal and Daniel. In addition, he is survived by Graham of Bristol, a close family friend to whom his parents gave a home when life was difficult.  

 He leaves, too, an extensive international family of friends and colleagues whose lives were enriched by his generosity, hospitality and friendship.

John changed almost countless peoples lives in a wonderful, positive manner. Not only will he be sorely missed, but his parting leaves a significant void for us all. Thank you, dear John, may you rest in peace with the knowledge of a life well lived.

 

Craig Boljkovac, Geneva, Switzerland, 11 July 2026