Project partners

Jacob de Boer is Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Toxicology and Director of the Department of Environment & Health at the Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He obtained a PhD in analytical chemistry at the VU in 1995. His research group consists of ca. 20 environmental chemists, toxicologists and epidemiologists, five technicians and 18 PhD students. Prof. De Boer has worked for many years on the environmental contamination and analysis of polychlorinated biphenyls, chlorinated paraffins and other flame retardants, as well as perfluorinated compounds, PAHs and other contaminants. He is an advisor for UN Environment, a member of the QUASIMEME Scientific Assessment Group, of the Certification Advisory Panel of IRMM, EU Joint Research Centre, Geel, Belgium, and of the European Scientific Advisory Panel of the CEFIC Long Range Initiative. He has published 220 peer reviewed, among one paper in Nature, two in Science, two books and 21 book chapters. His H-index is 53. In 2015 he was honoured as one of the most cited scientists in his field (Top 1%) according to Thomson & Reuter. He is editor-in-chief of Chemosphere (Impact factor 5.2) and member of the editorial board of the Handbook of Environmental Chemistry.

Louise van Mourik just completed her PhD in 2019 on the complex substances called chlorinated paraffins (CPs), in particular advancing analytical capabilities for CPs in order to allow the first evaluation of their levels in Australia. This was a joint collaboration between the University of Queensland (QAEHS) and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (dept. of Environment and Health, E&H) for which she received two grants (International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and the University of Queensland Centennial Scholarship and Research Training Fee). She is currently working as a post doc researcher at E&H on several projects such as developing and/or optimizing analytical methods for complex substances to assess their levels as well as fate and hazard potential. In the last five years she has published over seven papers, of which six on CPs, and (co)written eight consultancy reports.

Dr. Sicco Brandsma is an environmental analytical chemist. His research focuses on the development and implementation of novel analytical techniques to study brominated and phosphorus flame retardants, perfluorinated compounds, and chlorinated paraffins indoors and outdoors. He was a visiting scientist at ENTOX/QAEHS in Brisbane, Australia, NIES in Tsukuba, Japan and CCIW, Environment Canada, Burlington, Canada, and involved in several national and International/European (FIRE, ENFIRO, INTERFLAME, INTERWASTE) research projects. In 2017 he received a ‘Veni’-grant (€250,000) from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for research on the fate of toxic additives in recycled plastics. Within this NWO-project he will use high-resolution mass spectrometry to develop fast screening methods, to set up innovative leaching experiments, and to carry out suspect and non-target chemical screening to investigate additives in recycled plastics. He has authored and co-authored 28 publications in scientific peer-reviewed journals.

Marina graduated in Chemistry and received her PhD in Chemical Sciences in 1998 from the University of Pavia (Italy), with an experimental thesis in organic chemistry (metal-catalysed reactions). After which, she spent two years as post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Aarhus (Denmark), working on enantioselective synthesis and novel functionalisation of small peptides. In 2000 Marina returned to the Department of Organic Chemistry at the University of Pavia, holding a permanent position as responsible for GC-MS and support for NMR analytical services. In 2003 she joined as scientific officer the Reference Materials Unit of the Joint Research Centre (European Commission) located in Geel, Belgium. Marina has more than 15 years of experience in the certification of Reference Materials as project responsible as well as supervisor of research fellows. Her scientific production counts more than 30 papers. She represents the JRC in international committees in the field of metrology and standardisation in organic analytical chemistry and in experts' groups dealing with the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive.