Environmental forensics investigations sometimes require the determination of which contaminants came from where and how much is from each of the sources present on the site. This is called source apportionment and is a rapidly growing field in environmental litigation and environmental forensics. It is a field...
Compounding Conservatism in Risk Assessment and Air Travel
I was flying back from a conference near Hartford a couple of weeks ago and realized that I had become a victim to compounding conservatism. How is compounding conservatism in risk assessment related to air travel? Well, let me tell you a story.
Biogenic Toluene - Where does it come from?
In the first post of this series, I described the basis for how we became involved in determining a method for the detection of a natural, biogenic source of toluene. In this post, I describe how the process works and provide some thoughts on how to conduct an investigation.
Advice from your chemist - top four things when dealing with your spill into a river
You have had a spill… don’t panic, everything will be fine. Accidents happen. It is what you do next that is important. I have worked on many spills and here are what I believe are four of the most important things from a chemist’s perspective.
Toluene is natural - really?
In 2015, Chemistry Matters Inc. (CMI) provided the scientific support for Nexen at Long Lake during their emulsion release. As part of that role, I pored over data every evening, often long through the night to be able to communicate results to regulators and Nexen management and to put together the next day's...
Best Practices for Collecting Flawless Field Samples for Court Cases
A little under a year ago, Chemistry Matters provided an all-day legal sampling seminar on best practices, requirements and techniques for legal sampling.
2DGC: Why You Need to Know about this Niche Analytical Technique
You may have heard about an analytical technique called 2DGC or Two-Dimensional Gas Chromatography. Or perhaps you have not.
5 Outlooks for Environmental Forensics - Part Four: Communicate Science Clearly & With Certainty
This is part 4 of the blog series on the 5 outlooks of Environmental Forensics.
5 Outlooks for Environmental Forensics - Part One: The Use & Origin of Environmental Forensics
During the months before the INEF 2016 conference, I was thinking about my talk on environmental forensics. I feel like I “do” environmental forensics on most of my projects, even the ones that are not litigation based, so I was asking myself “What is environmental forensics?”.
Weatherproof Paper for your Legal Field Notes and Forms
New paper, how exciting!
The picture for this blog looks pretty boring. Just another picture of a chain of custody form.
Nope, these are special paper chain of custody forms. Printed them up myself on my inkjet printer... What makes them special? One is water resistant, one is water proof, and the last one is water...