Committee

Kate Jones is an analytical chemist working as a principal scientist and team leader for the Health & Safety Laboratory. She has wide experience and expertise in the biological monitoring of organic compounds, this includes skills in: the use of specialist analytical techniques and instrumentation such as GC, GC-MS, HPLC and LC-MS; method development; toxicology; and gaining approval for and running human volunteer studies. Kate has been heavily involved in developing biological monitoring for isocyanates in the UK as a means of assessing and controlling exposure.  As a team leader Kate has responsibility for developing research within the team and overseeing the day-to-day running of the Biological Monitoring laboratory, ensuring that work is completed to stringent quality standards within the requisite turnaround times.  She is a Council member for the British Occupational Hygiene Society, a regional organiser for BOHS and Secretary to the Occupational Toxicology scientific committee for ICOH.

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Lindsay Bramwell works for the Institute of Health and Society at Newcastle University and the Contaminated Land Team at Newcastle City Council. Teaching and research interests include pollution, exposure and human health risk assessment. Lindsay has a background in analytical chemistry, soil environment consultancy and public health risk assessment for environmental permitting. Recent projects include human body burden and exposure pathways for brominated flame retardants in the UK, quantitative risk assessments for allotment garden sites, persistent pollutants in fish in the tidal area of the Tyne River, and development of background concentrations of persistent pollutants in  Newcastle and Gateshead and health outcome associations.  She is also on the steering group for the North East Contaminated Land Forum.

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Mr Hart is a European Registered Toxicologist, who spent the first 17 years of his career working in the ICI Central Toxicology Laboratory, working on a variety of regulatory and research studies primarily concerned with carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity. He then moved into regulatory toxicology roles within ICI, and a US based speciality chemical company, before joining National Starch & Chemical (part of the ICI Group, now AkzoNobel) in 1999, as a product regulatory manager, responsible for several polymer based businesses, covering industrial, food contact, coatings, water treatment and personal care products. Currently his is working as a Senior Toxicologist, heavily involved in the REACH registrations of Akzo Nobel Speciality Chemicals products.

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Dr Muireann Coen is based in the Division of Biomolecular Medicine, Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London. Her research expertise and interest lies in the application of advanced metabonomic/metabolomic tools to address toxicological problems. Dr Muireann Coen completed her PhD under the supervision of Professors Jeremy Nicholson (Imperial College London) and Ian Wilson (AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals) which provided unique training in the applications of hyphenated spectroscopic techniques to study both chemical and biochemical systems. A major focus of her PhD studies was the application of metabonomic technologies to study an integrated systems response to paracetamol-induced toxicity. This involved the application of heteronuclear, solution-state NMR (1H and 31P) to study biofluids and tissue extracts and magic angle spinning (MAS) NMR to study intact tissue. It resulted in much novel mechanistic insight into the systems level endogenous consequences of paracetamol toxicity together with characterisation of paracetamol metabolites in these biological matrices.

Dr Coen has since held a Royal Society Research Fellowship for research conducted at the University of Sydney and currently holds the MRC Integrative Toxicology Training Partnership (ITTP) Career Development Fellowship. As part of her MRC ITTP fellowship she is concentrating on integrative, mechanistically-driven studies of clinically important adverse drug reactions. 
She also held the position of research fellow and coordinator of the large-scale, international COMET project which comprised five pharmaceutical companies and Imperial College London and focused on novel metabonomic approaches to address key pre-clinical toxicological questions. This project was highly successful in the integration of inter-disciplinary scientific data, for example, mass spectrometry and heteronuclear NMR spectroscopy together with multiple ‘omics platforms.

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Mark Hosford works for a chemical company that develops and manufactures additives for the fuels and lubricants industry.  He assesses the hazards and risks of substances in the company portfolio and ensures compliance with various chemicals regulations such as REACH.  He also works alongside chemists in new product development.  Previously, Mark worked for the Environment Agency where his main focus was assessing the risks to human health from chemical contaminants in soil. He has also worked in environmental consultancy and in veterinary pharmaceutical consultancy. Mark is a member of the British Toxicology Society and is a UK and European Registered Toxicologist.  He is the RSC Toxicology Group Committee’s representative to the Royal College of Pathologists’ Speciality Advisory Committee on Toxicology.

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Dr Hoskins is an independent consultant toxicologist specialising in occupational hygiene with particular reference to fibrous minerals, in particular the asbestos minerals. He is also consulted on problems that arise with consumer products concerning their chemistry and possible adverse effects. Before taking early retirement he was a scientific staff member of the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit. Here he worked on the toxicity of mineral fibres and particulates and was in charge of the Unit's inhalation facilities.

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Dr Illing is currently a semi-retired self-employed consultant in toxicology, microbiology and risk assessment for occupational health, product and process safety and environmental pollution. He is a Titular Member of IUPAC Committee VII (Chemistry and Health) and its toxicology and risk assessment sub-committee, and an Honorary Lecturer in the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of Manchester. He also serves on the RSC Environmental Health and Safety Committee and has been RSC representative on both the former Home Office Poisons Committee and the DEFRA Chemicals Stakeholder Forum. His main interests are in the principles of risk analysis and their application to health and environmental risk assessment and management, and include new approaches to human health risk assessment, the meaning and application of the ‘precautionary principle’ and issues that lie on the borderline between toxicology and the social sciences

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George Kowalczyk is Principal Consultant Toxicologist with “wca-consulting”, specialising in environmental, consumer and occupational chemical risk assessment and REACH registration work. He has over 30 years’ experience in the assessment of human health risks from chemicals in a wide variety of settings including environmental, occupational, agrochemical and pharmaceutical sectors. He was previously Regional Toxicologist with Public Health England in the North West where he had strategic role in national chemicals advice and guidance particularly for contaminated land, asbestos in the environment, waste incineration, drinking water quality and the forthcoming revisions to the COMAH Regulations. Also operationally, he was involved directly in responding to chemical incidents of both an acute and chronic nature and in providing health input to planning and permitting consultations.
He has also worked as an environmental toxicologist in other government agencies namely the Department of Health (1997-2003) and the former Health Protection Agency, HPA (2003-2013) and Public Health England (PHE). George and also spent 15 years heading the Toxicology Unit within the Medical Service of British Coal (1981 -1996).
He has played a prominent role in professional societies and is a regular lecturer on toxicological issues on several postgraduate courses.  George is a EUROTOX Registered Toxicologist (ERT) and a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT).

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Camilla Pease is a European Registered Toxicologist, working as Principal Scientist in Human Health Toxicology for the Environment Agency, working on the topics of Air, Land and Water pollution. Prior to this role, she has 10 years experience working in the areas of human safety research and consumer safety risk assessment for Unilever’s global Safety & Environmental Assurance Centre. She holds a BSc Hons in Chemistry, Life Systems and Pharmaceuticals and a PhD in Chemistry (macromolecular crystallography) both from York University and began her career in toxicology within the Medical School of Imperial College London. She is experienced in human health safety/risk assessment across a broad range of industrial chemical exposure scenarios and has specific research expertise in skin toxicology, mechanistic toxicology, chemical biotransformation, analytical chemistry, absorption-distribution-metabolism-excretion (ADME), in vitro alternatives and human health risk assessment frameworks. She has worked in publishing as the Managing Editor of the publication ‘Macromolecular Structures’. As well as performing various roles on toxicology committees in the UK and EU during her career, she is currently co-editor of the British Toxicology Society Newsletter.

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Michael Quint is an environmental consultant and registered toxicologist with over 25 years’ experience of assessing chemicals in the environment, primarily focused on the risk assessment of contaminated land. He has worked in the USA and UK and has undertaken numerous projects for public and private sector clients. A registered expert witness, he has helped to develop government guidance in contaminated land risk assessment and has provided expert evidence. His publications include "Environmental Impact of Chemicals: Assessment and Control" and he was a contributing author to Blackwells' "Handbook of Environmental Risk Assessment" and Sweet and Maxwell's "Contaminated Land (Second Edition)". He was joint founder of the Society of Brownfield Risk Assessment (SoBRA), which he represents on BSI's EH/4 (soil quality) technical committee. Mike was a member of the Cabinet Office’s Soil Guideline Value Task Force and was recently named by Defra as one of 13 leading experts within the land contamination sector.

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Dr Martin Rose works for the Defra Central Science Laboratory (CSL) in York where he leads work in the environment, food and health area.  He was recently appointed Head of the UK National Reference Laboratory for chemicals in food (as required by each Member State under EU legislation). He has been involved with research on dioxins 1985 and since then has expanded his interests into the wider environmental contaminants area, including emerging contaminants (organofluorine compounds such as PFOS and brominated organic contaminants such as flame retardants and brominated dioxins).  He is responsible for the application of analytical chemistry to multi-disciplinary research projects looking at aspects such as environmental pathways, remediation, risk assessment methodologies, emergency response, bioanalytical methods, ecotoxicology, reproductive toxicology and identification and prioritisation schemes for emerging contaminants.

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Dr Smith is a molecular toxicologist with research interests in environmental chemicals. In particular, he is interested in genetically variable mechanisms of how chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls and polychlorinated dioxins interact with iron homeostasis to cause malfunctions of haem metabolism and tumours.  Dr Smith also has interests in the risk assessment of chlorinated insecticides like DDT and in the use of genetics and toxicogenomics in toxicology studies. He is currently head of the Genetic Susceptibility Group at the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit, Leicester University and Honorary Lecturer in Pathology. Previous to joining the MRC, Dr Smith studied and worked in the biochemistry and chemistry departments of the Universities of Liverpool and Glasgow (respectively) on sterol metabolism in marine biochemistry and in human atherosclerosis.

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Ovnair Sepai is a European Registered Toxicologist, working as a Principal Toxicologist and leading the General Toxicology Group for Public Health England.  
The General Toxicology Group role is to advice the Department of Health and other Government Departments and Agencies on the human health aspects of chemical contamination in water, waste and land, chemicals in consumer products, cosmetics and toys. The group also support frontline Public Health professional during acute incidents and carry out risk assessment for both acute and chronic exposures.  This work has led to many publications, expert reports and documents.  
Ovnair Sepai’s research interests are in the application of biomarkers in risk assessment and she has experience and expertise in human biomonitoring.  She is the UK National Coordinator for Human Health for the OECD test guideline program.  She supports the principles of the 3Rs and applies this to research and test method development.

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