Blacksmith Technical Advisory Board
Margrit von Braun, Ph.D. P.E.
Administrative Dean and Founder, Environmental Science Program, University of Idaho.
Dr. von Braun is the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies and has been on the University of Idaho faculty since 1980. She received her BS in Engineering Science and Mechanics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, her MCE in Civil Engineering at the University of Idaho, and her Ph.D. in Civil/Environmental Engineering at Washington State University. She was awarded the College of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Award in 1992. Dr. von Braun was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow from 1993 to 1996. Her research areas include human health risk assessment, hazardous waste site characterization with a focus on sampling dust contaminated with heavy metals, and risk communication.
Pat Breysse, M.D.
Director of the Division of Environmental Health Engineering
Department of Environmental Health Sciences
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Pat Breysse is currently the Director of the Director of the Division of Environmental Health Engineering in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is also the Director of the Center for Childhood Asthma in the Urban Environment. This is a large multi-investigator research program funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and D. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Breysse is an active researcher with over 120 peer-reviewed publications. His research focuses on air pollution and risk assessment. Dr. Breysse serves or has served on numerous government committees and panels including the U.S. National Toxicology Program, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and National Academy of Sciences.
Tim Brutus
Risk Management Specialist
New York City Department of Environmental Protection
Mr. Brutus is currently the Risk Management Specialist for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection for the downstate reservoirs that bring all of the water into New York City. His previous experience is on complex multi-technology remediation projects with CH2M Hill, Inc. He has extensive site investigation experience including, but not limited to, indoor and outdoor air sampling, multiple groundwater and soil sampling techniques and technologies. He has aso contributed to other non-profit organizations restoring contaminated brownfields to their former use as wetlands and worked in analytical laboratories in New York and New Jersey.
Jack Caravanos, Ph.D., CIH, CSP
Director, MS/MPH program in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
Hunter College
Jack Caravanos is an Assistant Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York where he directs the MS and MPH program in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. He received his Master of Science from Polytechnic University in NYC and proceeded to earn his Doctorate in Public Health (Env Health) from Columbia University's School of Public Health in 1984. Dr. Caravanos holds certification in industrial hygiene (CIH) and industrial safety (CSP) and prides himself as being an "environmental health practitioner". He specializes in lead poisoning, mold contamination, asbestos and community environmental health risk.
Dr. Caravanos has extensive experience in variety of urban environmental and industrial health problems and is often called upon to assist in environmental health assessments (i.e. lead/zinc smelter in Mexico, health risks at the World Trade Center, ground water contamination in NJ and municipal landfill closures in Brooklyn). Presently he is on the technical advisory panel of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the Brooklyn-Queens Aquifer Feasibility Study (a NYC Department of Environmental Protection sponsored community action committee evaluating health risks associated with aquifer restoration).
Denny Dobin
President, Society for Occupational and Environmental Health
Mr. Dobbin has over 40 years occupational hygiene experience as an officer in the US Public Health Service and as an independent. His assignments included seventeen years with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, US Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (and its predecessors) where he managed research programs and developed policy including a two year assignment with the U.S. Congress in the Office of Technology Assessment. He worked on toxic chemical issues at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He managed a Superfund grant program for model hazardous waste worker and emergency responder training for ten years at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, U.S. National Institutes of Health. Since 1997 he has worked independently on occupational, environmental and public health policy issues for non-profit, labor and other non-governmental organizations.
Mr. Dobbin is the president of the Society for Occupational and Environmental Health, an international society and is past Chair of the Board of Directors of the Association of Occupational and Environmental Clinics. He is past Chair of the Occupational Health and Safety Section, American Public Health Association. He was the 1998 honoree for the OHS/APHA Alice Hamilton award for life-time achievement in occupational health. He is an elected fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, an international occupational and environmental health honor society. Mr. Dobbin is a member of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists where he served as recording secretary of the Physical Agents Threshold Limit Value committee and chaired the Computer and Nominating committees. He has participated in the American Academy of Industrial Hygiene, the National Public Health Policy Association and Society of Risk Assessment. He is a Certified Industrial Hygiene (ret).
Mr. Dobbin holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Idaho, and a M.Sc. in Occupational Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
Josh Ginsberg, Ph.D.
Director of Asia Programs, Wildlife Conservation Society
As Director of Asia Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, Josh Ginsberg oversees 100 projects in 16 countries. He received a B.S. from Yale, and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton. Dr. Ginsberg spent 17 years as a field biologist/conservationist working in Asia and Africa on a variety of wildlife issues. He has held faculty positions at Oxford University, University College London, is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and is the author of over 40 reviewed papers and three books on wildlife conservation, ecology and evolution.
Dr. Yu Yang Gong
Managing Director, ESD China Limited
Dr Gong is currently the Managing Director of ESD China Limited, and has served as the Vice President for the Louis Berger Group (USA), and Regional Manager for ERM China. He is a licensed Professional Engineer registered in the United States with over 20 years of diverse consulting and academic experience, primarily in the USA and China.
He has his B.Sc. and M. Sc. from Beijing University in China, and Ph.D. from Buffalo University in USA. He has both industrial and academic experience in the following areas: Soil and Groundwater Pollution Control Regulation and Policy Development, Contaminated Site Investigation (SI/RI); Risk Assessment (e.g., RBCA), Site Remediation, Solid/Hazardous Waste Management, Surface Water and Groundwater Quality Modelling, Contaminated Facility Decontamination, Waste Reduction and Reuse, and Asbestos/Lead Based Paint Abatement. His experience in hazardous waste and contaminated site regulation and policy development is best represented in his capacity serving as an international expert for World Bank, ADB and other international agencies (US TDA and Germany GTZ) and work in several developing and developed countries (USA, Israel, Sri Lanka, Japan, China etc).
Dr. Gong’s experience in Contaminated Site Investigation and Remediaton includes, Environment Site Assessment and Characterization (ESA, PA/SI/RI), Treatability/Pilot Study, FS, EE/CA, In-Situ and On-Site Remediation System Design and Costing, System Installation and O&M. He has 15 years hands on experience in technologies such as Incineration, Thermal Desorption, Chemical Oxidation & Reduction, SVE, Bioventing, Air Sparging, Bioslurping, Bioslurry, Soil Washing, Pump and Treat, Funnel and Gate (with treatment wall/barrier), Natural Attenuation, Institutional Control (such as capping); Excavation/dredging and Secured Landfill Disposal.
Dr Gong is a task member for the WEF book Hazardous Waste Treatment Process and has numerous publications/presentations in site investigation and remediation. His PhD thesis is on PCBs fate and transport. Currently he serves as a Technical Adviser for Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) for its POPs contaminated land cleanup program, participating PCB NIP review, contaminated facility decontamination guideline and POPs Contaminated Site Priority Action Plan preparations. He is also an invited technical advisor for the Guideline for Chongqing Contaminated Site Soil and Groundwater Investigation, Risk Assessment and Restoration. He serves in a similar capacity to Beijing City, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.
David J. Green
Owner and CEO of Phoenix Soil, LLC; United Retek of CT LLC; American Lamp Recycling, LLC; Green Globe, LLC; and Jayjet Transportation, LLC.
David Green received his M.ed in chemistry and has owned and operated hazardous waste remediation companies since 1979. His companies have conducted in-situ and ex-situ treatments of hazardous materials on over 16,700 sites in the US, China, UK, and central Europe. The technologies incorporated include, low temperature thermal desorption, solidification/stabilization and chemical treatment. David serves as Chairman of the Local Emergancy Planning Commision and the Director of Operations for the Connecticut's Department of Homeland Security USAR Team.
David Hanrahan, M.Sc.
Director of Global Programs, the Blacksmith Institute
David Hanrahan oversees the technical design and implementation for Blacksmith of over 40 projects in 14 countries. Prior to joining Blacksmith, David worked at the World Bank for twelve years on a broad range of environmental operations and issues, across all the Bank’s regions. During much of this time he was based in the central Environment Department where he held technical and managerial positions and participated in and led teams on analytical work and lending operations.
Before joining the World Bank, he had twenty years of experience in international consultancy, during which time he also earned post graduate degrees in policy analysis and in environmental economics. His professional career began in Britain in water resources for a major international engineering consultant. He then moved to Australia to build the local branch of that firm, where he helped to develop a broad and varied practice for public and private sector clients. He later returned to the UK and became Development Director for an environmental consultancy and subsequently Business Manager for a firm of applied economics consultants. In 1994 he was recruited by the World Bank to join its expanding Environment Department.
David Hunter, Sc.D.
Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard University School of Public Health
Dr. Hunter received an M.B.B.S. (Australian Medical Degree) from the University of Sydney. He continued his formal education at Harvard University, receiving his Sc.D. in 1988. Dr. Hunter is a Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Hunter is involved with several large, population-based cohort studies, including the Nurses' Health Study (I and II), Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and the Physicians' Health Study. Among the goals of these large cohort studies is to investigate gene-environment interactions, including the impact of lifestyle factors, on disease causation. Disease endpoints of interest for some of these cohorts include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. He is also involved in long running studies of nutritional influences on HIV progression in Tanzania.
Eric Johnson
Member of the Board of Trustees, Green Cross Switzerland
Eric Johnson has a broad perspectice on the environment and chemical contamination. He began his career as an editor of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Week magazines. He then became involved in the selection, assessmen and remediation of industrial sites. One of his major projects was the remediation and conversion of a former aluminum smelter to alternate land-use. Mr. Robinson was an early adopter of life-cyle assessment. That, combined with his experience in environmental impact assessment, led to his 1996 appointment as editor of Environmental Impact Assessment Review – a leading peer-reviewed journal in the field.
Mr. Johnson has analyzed numerous environmental issues that touch on the chemilcal industry including: alternative fuels, brominated flame retardants, CFCs and replacements, ecolabels (for detergents, furniture polishes, hairsprays and personal computers), GHG emissions and trading, plastics recylcling, PVC and the chlorine-chain, REACH, socially-responsible investing, tri-butyl tins and TRI and environmental reporting. In 1994 he organized the first Responsible Care conference for plant managers in Europe. Currently, his main work is in comparing the carbon footprints of various sources of energy. He has worked internationally, concentrating mainly on the US and Europe. Mr. Robinson is an active member of the Board of Green Cross Switzerland.
Donald E. Jones
Founder of Quality Environmental Solutions, Inc.
Donald Jones is the founder of Quality Environmental Solutions, Inc. and was previously Director of the IT Corporation national program for clients with hydrocarbon-related environmental problems and development of environmental management programs. He has served as an elected Board of Health member and was appointed as Right-To-Know and Hazardous Waste Coordinator in the State of Massachusetts. Mr. Jones currently serves on the Local Water Board, as technical consultant to the local Facilities Board and provides editorial review of technical papers and publications for the National Ground Water Association.
Mukesh Khare
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
Former Atlantic LNG Chair Professor in Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Fellow, Wessex Institute of Great Britain
Principal Member, International Sustainable Technological Association (ISTA), Arizona State University, USA
Principal Reviewer, Research Management Group, USA
Member Research Review Committee, National Research Foundation, Pretoria, South Africa
Consultant (Air Pollution), Government of Delhi, India
Prof. Mukesh Khare is serving as Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. Professor Khare received his PhD in Faculty of Engineering (Specialized in Air Quality) from the University of Newcastle_Upon_Tyne, UK in 1989. He has published to date more than 35 refereed research articles in professional journals, 40 articles in refereed conferences/seminars, 02 books: Modelling Vehicular Exhaust Emissions, WIT Press, UK; Artificial Neural Networks in Vehicular Pollution Modelling, Springer, USA; 03 contributed chapters in books/handbooks, published by WIT Press, and Elsevier, USA. Additionally, he has published about 20 technical reports on research/consultancies conducted for government agencies and private industries. Prof. Khare continues to serve as peer reviewer for several government ministries grants programs and state programs and consultant/advisor to the Government of Delhi, India. He is also serving as reviewer to many journals and publishing houses. Prof. Khare is in the editorial board of International Journal of Environment and Waste Management and Guest Editing one of its special issues on Urban Air Pollution, Control and Management.
Prof. Khare’s research has focused on local scale urban air quality modelling targeting the predictions of episodes at urban roads/intersections, mainly arising out from undefined low-level/line sources sources. Current research areas include formulation of air quality models and their validation; indoor air quality modelling in air-conditioned and naturally ventilated buildings and exposure assessment of related pollutants on indoor occupants. He has also worked extensively in the area of industrial wastewater treatment particularly application of Rotating Biological Contactor Systems to treat industrial and sewage wastes. Prof. Khare and his research group have carried out a number of on site assessments of air pollutants and designed a number of effluent treatment plants to treat the corresponding wastes from various types of industries.
Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc.
Director, Center for Children's Health and the Environment,
Chair, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, and
Director, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Dr. Landrigan is a pediatrician and an international leader in public health and preventive medicine. Dr. Landrigan's pioneering research on the effects of lead poisoning in children led the US government to mandate removal of lead from gasoline and paint, actions that have produced a 90% decline in incidence of childhood lead poisoning over the past 25 years. His leadership of a National Academy of Sciences Committee on pesticides in children's diets generated widespread understanding that children are uniquely vulnerable to toxic chemicals in the environment. The findings of the NAS Committee secured passage of the Food Quality Protection Act in 1996, a major US federal pesticide law and the first environmental statute to contain specific proections for infants and children. Dr. Landrigan served as Senior Advisor to the US Environmental Protection Agency where he was instrumental in helping to establish the EPA's Office of Children's Health Protection. Dr. Landrigan has been a leader in developing the National Children's Study, the largest study of children's health and the environment ever launched in the United States.
Ian von Lindern, Ph.D
CEO and Chariman, Terra Graphics Environmental Engineering, Inc.
Dr. Ian von Lindern received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering (1971) from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA; and his M.S. in Biometeorology and Atmospheric Studies (1973) and Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering (1980) from Yale University, New Haven , CT. Dr. von Lindern has 30 years of environmental engineering and science experience in Idaho. He has directed over 30 major environmental investigations, involving solvent contamination of groundwater in the Southwest, an abandoned petroleum refinery, secondary smelters and battery processors, landfills, uranium mill tailings, and several major lead sites including: Dallas, TX; the Niagara and Riverdale Projects in Toronto, Canada; the Marjol Battery Site in Throop, PA; ASARCO/Tacoma, WA; East Helena and Butte/Anaconda in MT; Anzon Industries in Philadelphia, PA and the Rudnaya Pristan-Dalnegorsk Mining District, Russian Far East. Through TerraGraphics, Dr. von Lindern has worked continually for Idaho Department of Environmental Quality on various projects since the company’s inception in 1984.
He has been the lead Risk Assessor for the Bunker Hill Superfund Site in north Idaho, communicating associated risk issues at many public meetings in the community. In the last few years, Dr. von Lindern directed and completed the Union Pacific Railroad “Rails-to-Trails Risk Assessment;” the exhaustive Five-Year Review of the Populated Areas of the BHSS; the Human Health Risk Assessment for the Basin; and several other technical tasks. Dr. von Lindern has served as a U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) Member on three occasions: the Review Subcommittee for Urban Soil Lead Abatement Demonstration Project, 1993; the Subcommittee Assessing the Consistency of Lead Health Regulations in U.S. EPA Programs, Special Report to the Administrator, 1992; and the Review Subcommittee Assessing the Use of the Biokinetic Model for Lead Absorption in Children at RCRA/CERCLA Sites, 1988. He also served on the U.S. EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory
Bill Lorenz
Former Director, Environmental Resources Management, Young Leaders Programme Director, GIFT
Ira May
Geologist, U.S. Army Environmental Center
Ira May has worked as a geologist with the U.S. Army Environmental Center for more than twenty years. He has extensive experience with the clean up of hazardous waste sites at army facilities throughout the United States. Mr. May serves as a reviewer for the Groundwater magazine, a publication of the National Ground Water Association and is Vice Chairman of the Long Term Monitoring Committee of the Geotechnical Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers.
Anne Riederer, Sc.D.
Co-Director, Global Environmental Health Program
Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Anne Riederer is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and co-directs the Global Environmental Health Masters in Public Health Program. She received her B.S. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 1989, an M.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1991, and an Sc.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Harvard School of Public Health in 2004. Her research focuses on assessing exposures of children and women of childbearing age to developmental neurotoxins, including pesticides, heavy metals, and other environmental contaminants. From 1998-2004, Dr. Riederer held a U.S. Superfund Basic Research Program Training Fellowship to study lead, mercury and PCB exposures at the former Clark Air Base, Philippines. From 1991-1998, she worked for Hagler Bailly Consulting on air, water and waste regulatory program development for the Philippines, Indonesia, Viet Nam, Mexico, Egypt for various bi- and multilateral development agencies. She directed the company’s Manila, Philippines office from 1994-1998.
Dave Richards
Independent Environmental Adviser
David Richards works as an independent environmental adviser in the areas of environmental policy and strategy, external engagement and multi-stakeholder initiatives, and strategic environmental risk management. He spent 32 years in the mining industry, 19 of those at operating mines and advanced development projects. For 28 years he was an employee of Rio Tinto. His background is in economic geology and geochemistry, and since 1992 he has worked in corporate environmental policy development and assurance. He has been involved in several multi-stakeholder initiatives including the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) project (2000 – 2002), the IUCN-ICMM Dialogue (2002 – present), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2004 – 2005), the Post Mining Alliance (2005 – present) and the Business & Biodiversity Offset Programme (BBOP) (2007 – present). He helped to develop geochemical Risk Assessment tools and has extensive experience in site-based strategic multi-disciplinary risk reviews.
Dr. Stephan Robinson
Director of the International Disarmament Program, Green Cross Switzerland
Stephan Robinson holds a PhD in experimental nuclear physics from Basel University. In 1994, he joined Green Cross Switzerland where he serves today as International Director of its Legacy of the Cold War Programme. The Programme addresses the full implementation of arms control and disarmament agreements; the safe and environmentally sound destruction
of weapons arsenals; the conversion and clean-up of military facilities and lands; reduced environmental impacts of military practices; improvements in the areas of public health, education, and social infrastructure in regions affected by military legacies; stakeholder involvement on military-environmental issues; and the building of a civil society.
Since 1995, the facilitation of chemical weapons destruction in both Russia and the U.S. has been a focus point of the Programme, which includes the operation of a network of eleven local and regional public outreach offices, the organisation of a Russian National Dialogue on chemical weapons destruction, but also practical community projects aiming at improving emergency preparedness and the health infrastructure. Other activities include the clean-up of a major oil spill at a nuclear missile in the Baltic area; the scientific investigation of a site of former chemical weapons destruction (open pit burning site); different risk assessments of military facilities; an inventory of the Soviet nuclear legacy; and epidemiological studies of public health impacts by chemical weapons storage. Stephan Robinson is regularly in Eastern Europe for on-site visits of projects and for meetings with various groups of stakeholders from government officials to local citizens.
Paul Roux
Chairman, Roux Associates, Inc. (www.rouxinc.com)
Paul Roux received an M.A. in Geology from Queens College, City University of New York, and a B.S. in Engineering Science from C.W. Post College, Long Island University. He is a certified Professional Geologist and Hydrogeologist, has served on the Editorial Board of Ground Water Monitoring and Remediation and currently serves on the Board of Registration of the American Institute of Hydrology
Mr. Roux has over 35 years of experience with contaminated soil and groundwater remediation at industrial plants and landfills. He has worked at a number of the largest and most complex Superfund sites in the US, as well as major chemical and petroleum facilities. Roux Associates, which was founded in 1981, currently has more than 230 professional employees in five offices. The firm provides a broad range of consulting and project management services to solve complex environmental, health, and safety problems associated with air, water, land and interior pollution; hazardous materials; and toxic waste treatment and disposal. Roux Associates was twice named as one of America's 500 fastest-growing private companies by Inc. Magazine and, since 1996, has been listed as one of the Top 200 Environmental Consulting Firms by Engineering News Record.
Leona D. Samson, Ph.D.
Ellison American Cancer Society Research Professor
Director, Center for Environmental Health Sciences
Professor of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Leona Samson received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from University College, Lndon University, and received postdoctoral training in the United States at UCSF and UC Berkeley. After serving on the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health for eighteen years, she joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001 as a Professor of Biological Engineering and the Director of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Samson's research has focused on how cells, tissues and animals respond to environmental toxicants. Dr. Samson has been the recipient of numerous awards during her career, including the Burroughs Wellcome Toxicology Scholar Award (1993-98); the Charlotte Friend Women in Cancer Research Award (2000); the Environmental Mutagen Society Annual Award for Research Excellence (2001). In 2001, Dr. Samson was named the American Cancer Society Research Professor, one of the most prestigious awards given by the society. The ACS Professorship was subsequently underwritten by the Ellison Foundation of Massachusetts. In 2003, she was elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science, and she will become the President of the Environmental Mutagen Society in 2004.
Brian Wilson
Program Manager
International Lead Management Center
MRSC - Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry
Brian Wilson is the Program Manager for the International Lead Management Center located in North Carolina, USA. He is responsible for the design and implementation of multi-stakeholder lead risk reduction programs. Before joining the ILMC he worked for 15 years with the oil industry followed by 18 years with MIM Holdings in the Metals Industry. He left the United Kingdom and MIM UK as the Group Personnel Manager in 1996 to join ILMC after a career that spanned smelter production, industrial relations and human resource management. Brian has worked with UNEP, UNCTAD and the Basel Secretariat on Lead Risk Reduction and Recycling projects in the Far East, Russia, Central and South America, the Caribbean and West Africa.
