Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, QA/QC, GC-MS Data Analysis, Legal Defense
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Expert has provided professional services in chemistry for over 40 years to government agencies and private industry, including legal firms. His commitment to careful, detailed, and documented work results in clients that rely on him to ensure that their legal positions and strategies are based on sound scientific principles backed by irrefutable data and documentation. Through many years of teaching all over the world (Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada, Central and South America, Europe, and throughout the U.S.) he has perfected the ability to explain complex analytical chemistry and other scientific principles in ways that lawyers and other non-chemists can understand and relate to.
Expertise and Credibility – Expert is an international expert in sampling, analysis, quality assurance / quality control (QA/QC), and analytical chemistry. He has some unusual expertise not typically found with expert witnesses; these involve his long professional experience with U.S. EPA, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Toxicology Program (NTP), and the American Chemical Society (ACS). He is a past chairman of the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry and was its newsletter editor for twenty years. He began in 1966 as a research scientist with the Southeast Water Research Laboratory in Athens, GA and this became one of EPA’s first national laboratories when EPA was created in 1970. He worked as Environmental Chemistry Department Head, Division Manager, Senior Program Manager, and Corporate Fellow at Radian International for 21 years where he managed a large laboratory and multi-million dollar projects from EPA and other agencies that involved air, water, soil, oil, petrochemicals, and toxic chemicals. During this time he also managed several multi-million dollar projects involving handling, analysis, safety and evaluation of hundreds of hazardous chemicals for NCI and NTP. He helped to design, build, and manage a Hazardous Materials Laboratory to safely handle hazardous chemicals with both acute (short term) and chronic (long term) toxic effects. He was the Keynote Speaker at the “Legends of Environmental Chemistry Symposium” at the 2008 ACS National Meeting, an invited speaker at the “History of Environmental Monitoring Symposium” at the 2013 National Environmental Monitoring Conference, and has received numerous awards over the years.
Legal Representation - Expert provides consulting and testimony for defendants involved with litigation based on deficient chemical data, inadequate QA/QC, poor sampling plans and/or procedures, old methods, failure to document or meet acceptance criteria, etc. Comprehensive reports with complete referenced sources ensure strong, thorough support. For example:
1. In 2014 provided consulting and data evaluation involving identification of synthetic organic chemicals. QA/QC review revealed that the reliability of compound identifications submitted as evidence failed requirements of Daubert rules of evidence resulting in favorable court rulings.
2. In 2013 provided lab analytical data and precision calculations to successfully demonstrate in testimony that levels of isopropyl alcohol in quality control samples of a company’s product were caused by the sampling procedure used rather than being added to samples by a worker. The worker’s job including all back pay and benefits was reinstated by the company.
3. Provided consulting and depositions resulting in favorable settlements for large chemical manufacturing clients. The cases involved sampling, analysis and QA/QC data from groundwater wells around several California cities. A unique advantage was a personal historical knowledge of the evolution of EPA methods including their development and usage.
There are 13 other cases.
Expert has over forty five years providing environmental analysis including gas chromatography (GC), mass spectrometry (MS) and associated quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC). At Radian International he supervised analytical laboratories with over one hundred chemists and technicians reporting to him.
Developed training courses for chemical sampling, analysis, and related QA/QC and presented them in Asia, Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe, South and Central America, and throughout the United States.Developed Data Quality Objectives for a U.S. classified intelligence agency and helped implement them so that more reliable chemical analytical data could be obtained from clandestine sampling and analysis activities.Helped design and manage a hazardous chemical laboratory for storing and using chemicals from the National Cancer Institute and the National Toxicity Program of NIEHS.Worked with EPA and USGS scientists to develop the world's largest database of environmental sampling and analytical methods at www.nemi.gov plus developed a restricted-access portion of that database for chemicals that could be used by terrorists. In addition provided expert knowledge systems (artificial intelligence) for using this information.Developed and implemented sampling and analytical methods for organic chemicals in water and air. In conjunction with this work also developed the first commercially available analytical reference chemicals for the 119 Priority Pollutants being regulated in the United States and throughout the world.