Speakers for Risk Assessment 2009

Mike Quint, Arup
Michael Quint has over 20 years experience of assessing the risks from hazardous chemicals in the environment, with a particular emphasis on the risk assessment of contaminated land. Graduating from Oxford University in 1987, he spent five years working on Superfund sites in the USA, before returning to the UK in 1992. Since then, he has undertaken hundreds of projects for public and private sector clients and has helped to develop UK and European guidance in contaminated land risk assessment. Mike's skills range from toxicological assessment to environmental audit and he has provided expert evidence to several Public Inquiries, a Civil Court, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and a Parliamentary Select Committee. He has numerous publications to his credit and is on the editorial board of Land Contamination and Reclamation.

Jonathan Atkinson MIEnvSc, Environment Agency
Having spent most of his youth in places like Africa, Chile and Fiji, Jonathan undertook a degree in Environmental Sciences at Plymouth and postgrad Dilpoma in Soil and Water Engineering at Silsoe. After his studies he continued his travels by doing VSO in the Philippines and two short stints on soil projects in Papau New Guinea and Burkina Faso.
Jonathan finally got his first proper job at 30 with the KCC Geotechnical Group. After two years he moved to pollution control in the KCC Waste Disposal Dept, which evolved into Waste Regulation. He joined the Environment Agency when it was formed in 1996 as the WRA was moved from the county to the Agency. He has worked on risk assessment of developed closed landfill sites, landfill engineering and environmental control enforcement on licenced sites, and a variety of contaminated land projects.

Mathew Hussey, Associate Director at Tysers UK Corporate Risks Division
Mathew Hussey is Associate Director at Tysers UK Corporate Risks Division, Lloyds oldest surviving insurance broker established 1820. He specialises in environmental insurance projects ranging from contaminated land sites, property portfolios, waste companies and energy projects. He is currently Co Vice President of the EIC Working Group for contaminated land and sits on the UKELA working groups for contaminated land and environmental liability.

Simon Firth, Firth Consultants
Simon Firth graduated with a Masters degree in hydrogeology in 1995 from University College London and spent his first years in consultancy conducting environmental assessments and remediation of contaminated sites. He became involved in risk assessment through groundwater modelling and later graduated to human health and ecological risk assessment. He is now an independent consultant specialising in risk assessment. During the last nine years Simon has spent the majority of his time conducting and reviewing environmental and human health risk assessments for contaminated sites across the globe, including Europe, North Africa and the US.

Phil Whitaker, Environment Agency
Phil graduated from Salford University with a degree in Environmental Sciences and joined Sheffield City Council as an Environmental Health Officer in the Environmental Protection Service in 1988.
Phil was responsible for the full range of environmental protection issues but specialised in contaminated land at a time when the heavily contaminated industrial  east end of the city was being redeveloped. Phil also implemented Part 2A for the Authority, developing the contaminated land strategy and leading on the investigation of the some of the early sites which have now been cleaned up.
Phil joined the Environment Agency in 2002 as the National Capital Projects Manager. He leads the Head Office Capital Works Contaminated Land Team which is responsible for:-
i) managing the EA capital programme for works on special sites and
ii) technically assessing capital project funding bids on behalf of Defra and Welsh Assembly Government.
Phil is a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

Frances Pollitt, Chemical Hazards and Poisons Division, Health Protection Agency
Frances began her career as a toxicologist in the pharmaceutical industry, working as a Study Director specialising in reproductive toxicology.  While in Industry, she obtained the Diploma in Toxicology of the Royal College of Pathologists. 
After several years gaining experience in practical toxicology, she moved to Government, working briefly at the Department of Environment before moving to the Department of Health.  There she worked for several years in food toxicology, advising on the safety of food additives and contaminants.  In this role she acting as scientific secretary to the Chief Medical Officer’s main expert advisory on chemicals, the Committee on Toxicity (COT), and was a member of several international committees on food safety.
In 1996, Frances moved into environmental toxicology, in which role she continued following the move of DH scientists to the Health Protection Agency ten years later.  Currently, she is deputy head of the General Toxicology Unit and, among other responsibilities, heads the team of toxicologists advising on the health effects of chemicals in contaminated land, drinking water and waste.  This entails close liaison with Defra, the EA and the Food Standards Agency, as well as with the regional offices of the HPA Chemical Hazards Division, who provide advice to local authorities and other stakeholders (e.g.the NHS) on human health risk assessments and the communication of potential health risks to the public.

Mary Harris, Independent Consultant
Mary Harris has been active in environmental research and consulting for over twenty five years. Following a successful career in mainstream environmental consultancy where she worked at technical and business director levels for ten years, she set up her own independent consultancy in January 2007.
Mary has prepared much good practice guidance on managing land contamination on behalf of Defra and predecessor bodies, the Environment Agency, CIRIA, WDA and others. She is joint author of CLR 11 (Model Procedures for the Management of Land Contamination, 2004) and the Local Authority Guide to the Application of Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (2001). With a regular training partner, she has developed and delivered training on Part 2A for Local Authority and Environment Agency regulators and for the private sector, and has delivered human health risk assessment training on behalf of the Environment Agency. Mary also led the expert working group which produced new guidance on the use of statistical techniques in the assessment of land contamination data.
As an independent consultant, Mary is actively involved in a number of contamination risk assessment projects, offering advice on aspects of design, interpretation and regulation, and is continuing to develop her now well established profile as a key trainer in this field.
Mary qualified as a SiLC in 2001 and contributes regularly to national and international conferences on legal, policy and risk assessment issues.

Dr Naomi Earl, BSc (Hons), PhD, Associate Director -Head of Human Health Risk Assessment for Contaminated Land
Naomi Earl is an Associate Director with over 12 years experience in consultancy.  Naomi’s main area of expertise is in the field of quantitative human health risk assessment relating to contaminated land. She has built up and developed a specialist team within Atkins to deliver projects in this area. She has been involved with the development of the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (CLEA) model, which is used to derive the Soil Guideline Values for human health (SGVs), since 1997. She currently works under a framework contract to assist the Environment Agency with issues related to the further development of the CLEA Model, and the derivation of SGVs. She has extensive experience of technical guidance writing.
Naomi has significant experience of carrying out and reviewing site-specific risk assessment for different land uses and sources of contamination, using a range of commercial risk assessment tools including CLEA UK, RiscHuman 3.1, Risk*Assistant, and RBCA for a range of sites and clients. This has included risk assessments as diverse as for trespassers on a derelict commercial site, a farm and a waterski lake, and the writing up of accompanying risk evaluations.
Naomi is working on a number of projects involving a detailed understanding of the Statutory Guidance for Part 2A of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act, and advice to both local authorities and commercial clients. She is fully versed in the most recent developments in UK human health. Naomi has developed training materials and delivered training on contaminated land to a variety of audiences.

Rob Ivens, Scientific Officer, Mole Valley DC
A Biology graduate from Plymouth, with 15 years experience as a regulator, Having also studied Environmental Protection and Process Management Rob has a particular interest in using data management and GIS systems to improve decision making.
As a regulator he inspected his old gassing landfills under statutory nuisance and is now on his 7th intrusive Part IIA site inspection. Rob considers himself lucky to work for a small local authority that has provided substantial resources to help improve decision making and project management
As GreyZone Ltd he provides data management and GIS services to the private and public sector.

Professor Paul Nathanail, LQM and the University of Nottingham
Paul is Professor of Engineering Geology at the University of Nottingham and Managing Director of Land Quality Management Ltd. His research, teaching and consultancy interests span the spectrum of risk based contaminated land management and sustainable urban regeneration. His team have developed decision support tools for site investigation design, human health risk assessment and remediation strategy selection. LQM are known for their work in training regulators and consultants and in peer reviewing countless reports for local authorities and developers. They pioneered the use of bioaccessibility in UK human health risk assessment and worked with CIEH to publish generic assessment criteria for 31 substances in December 2006.

Rob Reuter, Wardell Armstrong
Rob Reuter is an Associate Director and Principal Environmental Chemist at Wardell Armstrong.  Rob is originally from the United States where he previously worked as a research scientist and received his Maters degree in Environmental Chemistry from the University of Maryland in 1999.  Previous research looked at facilitated transport of pollutants by dissolved organic carbon in a Maryland aquifer system.  While at Wardell Armstrong, for the last eight years, Rob has focused on the redevelopment of brownfield land and remediation of contaminated sites.  His work has included the production of qualitative and quantitative risk assessments, remedial strategies and site investigation reports with a particular interest in human health risk assessment.  Rob has also taken a leading role in the firm’s contaminated land group; coordinating efforts across regional offices.

Samantha Deacon, Senior Consultant, ENVIRON UK Ltd
Samantha Deacon is a Senior Consultant at ENVIRON’s Bath office and leads the ecotoxicology team in the UK.  She has over 15 years experience in environmental regulation, consultancy and research in the assessment of chemical and biological hazards in the environment. Recent work includes advising clients on the implications to their operational activities of the new Environmental Damage Regulations, risks to protected habitats and species, human health and plant health from a range of operations, including composting bioaerosols, chemicals risk assessment for REACH Regulation, and delivery of ecological risk assessment training.
Prior to joining ENVIRON, Sam worked as a scientist in the Environment Agency (England & Wales) managing a programme of research to deliver the recently launched ecological risk assessment (ERA) framework and tools for assessing potential effects of soil contamination to ecosystems (primarily for Part 2A Regulations). Sam built and maintained partnerships with contaminated land practitioners including leading UK industries, conservation agencies, regulators and UK government. In her eleven years in regulation Sam contributed to over 65 publications, scientific papers and conference presentations including more than 50 Environment Agency technical reports.

Sean Needham, Principal Hydrogeologist, URS Corporation Ltd
A hydrogeologist with over twelve years post doctoral experience in hydrogeological site investigation techniques, conceptualisation and numerical flow and contaminant transport modelling within a variety of geological environments, particularly fractured aquifers.
Sean provides a national technical role within URS for numerical modelling and hydrogeological interpretation.  In addition to directing or providing internal peer review of numerical modelling projects, Sean still regularly undertakes construction and calibration of numerical models.
Groundwater flow and contaminant transport modelling of both porous media and fractured aquifers has involved utilising a variety of analytical and numerical codes, including FEFLOW, MODFLOW (Groundwater Vistas & Visual), FRAC3DVS and FRACTRAN.  Sean has particular expertise in the evaluation of DNAPL contaminated sites and remedial options and has applied many of these codes as part of Water Resource & Remedial evaluations and contaminant transport modelling for Quantitative Risk Assessments for controlled waters.  Sean has also provided Expert Witness testimony for a DNAPL contaminated site on behalf of the Environment Agency.
Site investigations have included the supervision and interpretation of aquifer pump testing, packer testing, downhole geophysics, a variety of percussive and rotary drilling techniques, borehole installation, soil and groundwater sampling.
Sean also coordinates and undertakes controlled waters risk assessments associated with contaminated land assessments using a variety of standard propriety R&D-P20 software (eg ConSim, RAM etc), landfill risk assessments (LandSim), or the application of numerical codes for more complicated assessments.

Jonquil Maudlin, Acting Manager, Pollution Control Team, Bristol City Council
Jonquil Maudlin read Chemistry at Birmingham University and worked for many years at the Home Office/Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Service, specialising in analysis of chemical residues at crime scenes – including suspected arson, document forgeries, illegal drugs and non-biological samples such as paint, glass and fibres.
After a period teaching science at a University in Nigeria, she returned to the Bristol University Veterinary School for some years researching antibiotic resistance by salmonella in animals.  Previous research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine involved insecticidal resistance of bed bugs. 
With an MSc in Environmental Health she has worked for Bristol City Council for 19 years in pollution control, with a particular interest in contaminated land management and in emergency incidents where human health, the environment, and contaminated land risks are identified.  Jonquil is acting manager of the pollution team and is currently chair of the Standing Conference on Land Contamination for the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.