Carbon Monoxide Advice

David G. Penney, Ph.D
Professor of Physiology and Occupational & Environmental Health, Director of Surgical Research, Consultant on: Carbon Monoxide Poisoning.

Email The Doctor

Please Specify if you want your mail to be private & confidentially treated, it will then be treated as such. If you do not specify this, it will be used on this site "anon" to help others by example. We hope you will help us with this.

David George Penney, Ph.D.

Dr. Penney obtained his bachelor of science degree from Wayne State University, 1963, and his master of science and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA in 1966 and 1969, respectively. Before coming to WSU in 1977, he was a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

His research interests in toxicology include carbon monoxide and cyanide poisoning, in cardiology normal and abnormal heart growth and hypertension, and in stroke strategies for lessening the neural damage of acute cerebral ischemia and hypoxia. Nevertheless, his dominant interest throughout his career has been in carbon monoxide, to which his more than 60 scientific papers on the topic attest. His work constitutes more published work on carbon monoxide by one person than anyone else in the world!

He has especial interests in the medical / scientific aspects of carbon monoxide toxicology, domestic and industrial. While he is intimately familiar with the effects of acute CO poisonings, he is also one of a few experts in the world on chronic, low-level CO poisoning, often the most difficult to diagnose, treat, and prove. The use of a customized, portable computer database on the world's CO literature makes the task of researching such poisonings much simpler and quicker.

Dr. Penney has been a member of select panels convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979 and again in 1989 to set standards for CO in outside air in the U.S. In the summer of 1997, he was invited by the World Health Organization (WHO) to work with eleven other experts from around the world in Europe to develop CO standards for the whole world.

In the spring of 1998, Dr. Penney journeyed to Australia to assist the Australian Medical Association in developing the means to prevent suicides involving carbon monoxide poisoning from motor vehicles. More recently, he was invited to England by the group CO Support to present a talk on chronic CO poisoning.

During the past 3 years, he has turned his energies increasingly to information technology in education. This work was supported in various ways largely by Academic Dean, Dr. Robert Frank. Major projects in this area have included the development of a new computer teaching facilities in Shiffman Library, the upgrade of faculty notes, and the placement of entire courses on the World Wide Web, i.e. Virtual Classroom.

Dr. Penney was invited to write an essay on Virtual Classroom for Basic Science Educator. He has also been invited to demonstrate its use as a distance learning tool at several universities in this country and abroad. One particularly notable series of presentations was in New Zealand, dubbed Web Tour '96. In March, 1999, he was invited to present Virtual Classroom at the Annual Central Group on Educational Affairs (CGEA) meeting in Kansas City, MO.

For four years past he served as Director of the Medical Physiology course, taken by all Yr. I medical students. His current teaching duties include Graduate Physiology (PSL 703), Developmental Physiology (PSL 768), and Integrated Physiology (PT 540).

Dr. Penney's published work includes over 110 research papers, more than a dozen review articles, various book chapters, and several books.

Dr. Penney is the father of four children, two boys and two girls. His interests away from the Medical School include travel, building water gardens, genealogy, writing local history, and presenting local history, to civic groups, school children, on TV (Ch. 55, Royal Oak Archives), and now in Cyberspace (Historic Royal Oak) and (Benzie County History & Images). He is presently Coordinator of Historical Research for the Royal Oak Historical Society.

He has been active in assisting the Royal Oak Public Schools in developing programs in elementary education, including a very successful Annual Science Fair.