About

Dr. John Molot graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa in 1971. For the past 36 years, he has focused his medical practice on environmental medicine, evaluating and treating patients with environmentally linked conditions, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS, fibromyalgia (FM), and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). He has assessed more than 12,000 patients, most of whom were referred for consultation by other physicians. Presently, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa and performs independent medical legal assessments exclusively.

Along with his clinical experience, Dr. Molot has reviewed thousands of published studies on environmental health and has developed a recognized expertise on indoor air quality and the adverse health effects of common environmental exposures. In the 1990s, he was the Medical Advisor on the Federal Task Force on Material Emission Standards, chaired by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). He was a member of the 7-person Task Group on Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality at the National Research Council formed to develop and recommend changes to the National Building Code (2020) to ensure that at least a minimum level of appropriate indoor air quality will be achieved in newly constructed buildings. He presently sits on the Canadian Committee on Indoor Air Quality, which is supported by the Government of Canada’s Clean Air Regulatory Agenda, with administrative support and technical assistance provided by the National Research Council of Canada and Health Canada. Dr. Molot corroborated in the development of several of their modules, including Scent Free Buildings, Addressing Chemical Sensitivities and Addressing COVID-19 in Buildings.

He wrote the Academic and Clinical Perspective component of the Ontario government-funded Business Case Proposal for a Centre of Excellence in Environmental Health, which contained more than 1100 citations from the medical literature. This led to the creation of a Provincial Task Force on Environmental Health in 2016, to which Dr. Molot was appointed by the Ontario Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. The Task Force examined the current state of knowledge in care, education and research regarding ME/CFS, FM and ES/MCS, identified gaps and reported their findings and recommendations. An Interim report was submitted in June 2017 and the Final Report of the Task Force was submitted to the Minister at the end of December 2018.

He has taught medical students from the Universities of Toronto, Ottawa, Queens and Laval, and others from universities abroad. He taught residents in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, including residents in the government-funded Environmental Health postgraduate year three (PGY3) program. This is an enhanced skills program which teaches how to obtain a detailed environmental history, discuss environmental risks with patients and provide information and other resources to address patient and community health problems that are linked to the environment. He has also lectured to undergraduate students at the University of Toronto and graduate students in the Environmental and Occupational Health Program at Lakehead University.

Dr. Molot also educates his peers. He was a member of the Environmental Health Committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians from 1994 to 2016. He has developed, collaborated and provided accredited workshops for both the Canadian and Ontario Colleges of Family Physicians regarding the relationship of common chronic illnesses and the environment, including ME/CFS, FM and ES/MCS, and how to assess functional ability in these patients. In January 2022, Dr. Molot lectured at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City to the Faculties of Occupational Medicine of the Icahn School of Medicine and Yale University on the biological mechanisms of MCS.

Dr. Molot no longer has a clinical practice but still conducts independent medical-legal examinations when requested by legal representatives. He is working closely with the Environmental Health Associations of Quebec and the newly formed Environmental Health Association of Canada in their project Empowering Community and Removal of Barriers (ECROB). This project is being funded for the next two years in part by the Government of Canada’s Social Development Partnerships Program – Disability. The three goals of ECROB are to raise awareness about the legal rights of people with MCS; to create a group of educators who can deliver workshops across Canada to teach and inform other organizations about the disability, accessibility, and appropriate accommodations required for accessibility; and to strengthen the connections between legal, medical, environmental and disability groups to address accessibility in all these sectors and remove barriers, such as fragranced/perfumed or toxic products) that currently prevent access for those with MCS.

Dr. Molot is the First Author of two recent peer-reviewed publications entitled Neurological Susceptibility to Environmental Exposures: Pathophysiological Mechanisms in Neurodegeneration and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and Multiple chemical sensitivity: It’s time to catch up to the Science.

He is also the author of 12,000 Canaries Can’t Be Wrong.