Wayne Roth-Nelson specializes in assessing human health risks from toxic chemicals and pathogens in outdoor and indoor environments and in food and pharmaceuticals. He managed one of the first comprehensive human health and animal food-chain risk assessments in 1976 for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Earlier, he was a researcher in urban renewal and new community systems at Westinghouse Urban Systems and General Electric Center for Advanced Studies. Subsequently, he had a private practice in habitat and ecosystem management while earning a Ph.D. in environmental science and policy at the University of London through a National Wildlife Federation fellowship.
More recently, he was supervising scientist or principal investigator for CERCLA/RCRA baseline and remedial risk assessments at nine installations of the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Department of Energy throughout the United States. As senior risk science consultant at ICF Kaiser Engineers, he provided peer reviews of health and ecological risk assessments performed by Department of Energy contractors for the Rocky Flats nuclear installation. While risk assessment manager at Science Applications (SAIC), he was a member of the Risk Assessment Committee for the Westinghouse Hanford nuclear installation, working with state and federal regulators to develop site-specific risk assessment methodology. While risk assessment leader at Battelle Memorial Institute, he assisted the Air Force Occupational and Environmental Health Laboratories and The MITRE Corporation to reconcile Air Force and U.S. EPA risk assessment guidance.
Roth-Nelson served as a consultant to seven law firms representing individual plaintiffs as well as industry defendants in toxic tort litigation. Recently, he served as expert witness for defendants in a civil lawsuit tried by jury in a federal district court and for plaintiffs in a state district court. His experience in evaluating health risk evidence in toxic injury lawsuits led to his certification by the American Board of Forensic Examiners. His article on "Risk Evidence in Toxic Torts" was published in 1996 in The Environmental Lawyer (Vol. 2, No. 2) by the American Bar Association.
He is a member of the ad hoc policy committee of the Society for Risk Analysis and founder and interim chair of its Risk Science and Law Specialty Group. The specialty group will explore the interface between legal and scientific standards for evidence of causation and enhanced risk from exposure to chemicals and microbes in environmental media, food, and drugs. Also, the group will investigate the policy advantages and drawbacks of legislative and regulatory initiatives to mandate particular uses and methods of risk assessment, as well as the role of the courts in shaping government risk assessment and risk management rules and decisions.
Contact Information: Wayne Roth-Nelson
Roth-Nelson Risk Science in Lafayette, Colorado
Telephone (303) 494-9694; fax (303) 494-3785; e-mail roth_nelson@compuserve.com
Related Links
Home Page of the SRA Risk Science & Law Group
Last updated September 10, 1998.
Copyright © 1997 by Tec-Com Inc.