Harry W. Hays

Harry W. Hays, 91, a toxicologist who retired from the Department of Agriculture in 1980, died Feb. 6 at George Washington University Hospital after a heart attack. Dr. Hays, who lived in Washington, was born in Emmitsburg, Md., and graduated from Franklin & Marshall College. He received a doctorate in biology at Princeton.

He was a research pharmacologist with Ciba Pharmaceutical Co. in Summit, N.J., and a professor of pharmacology at Wayne State University in Detroit before moving to Washington in 1957 to become director of the advisory center on toxicology at the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. In 1966, he joined the U. S. Department of Agriculture as director of the pesticides regulation division.

When that division was assigned to the Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Hays was assigned to the national program staff for food, safety and health. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, a founder of the Society of Toxicology and an adviser on toxicology for the International Dictionary of Medicine and Biology.

After retiring from the Agriculture Department he did toxicology consulting for five years. His first wife, Elsa L. Hays, died in 1988. Survivors include his wife, Florence Hays of Washington; and a son by his first wife, Gregory Hays of Hagerstown.