Environment Protection Authority Victoria (EPA), on behalf of the Heads of EPAs Australia and New Zealand (HEPA) and the Australian Government Department of Environment and Energy, hosted a summit of international environment experts and regulators on PFAS in April 2017.
You can watch the summit’s keynote speeches below.
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Dr Éva Fetter – German Environment Agency
Éva Fetter is a scientific officer at the German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt – UBA), which is the main environment agency in Germany, subordinated to the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety.
Ms Fetter supports the Section of Chemicals engaged in activities under the European chemicals regulation (REACH – Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals – EC1907/2006). She has a special focus on assessing chemicals with potential endocrine disrupting properties, and development and enforcement of risk management strategies concerning PFAS.
Hilary Thornton – US Environmental Protection Agency
Hilary Thornton has managed the cleanup of Superfund sites as a remedial project manager for the US Environmental Protection Agency since 1997.
He is a former co-chair of the EPA’s Engineering Forum and a current co-chair of the National Association of Remedial Project Managers (NARPM), as well as co-lead of the Engineering Forum Greener Cleanup Subcommittee. He chaired the Session on Characterization and Mitigation of PFASs (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) at the March 2016 Emerging Contaminants Summit in Westminster, Colorado.
Mr Thornton presented a talk entitled, ‘Emerging contaminants: per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)’ to the Georgia Environmental Conference in Jekyll Island, Georgia on 25 August 2016. He presented an expanded version of that talk to the EPA Engineering Forum on 14 September 2016.
He currently leads a workgroup of the EPA’s Engineering Forum in developing an issue paper on PFAS.
Timothy Dee – Aurecon New Zealand Ltd
Tim brings his considerable international expertise to Aurecon New Zealand’s contaminated sites team, having worked on significant sites across the UK, Europe and New Zealand. Recently this has included the assessment of perfluorinated compounds at an electroplating site in the UK.
Tim has also provided his risk assessment expertise to the Emerging Contaminants Working Group of the Network for Industrially Contaminated Land in Europe (NICOLE). As a chartered member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Tim is a specialist in the implementation, delivery and management of contaminated sites, from initial preliminary appraisals through to remediation management, validation and ongoing consent monitoring.
What is the summit?
The summit, from 4–5 April 2017 in Melbourne, focused on the environmental regulation of PFAS based on current human health reference values for PFAS.
It was an opportunity for environment and human health regulators to draw on their knowledge and experience to discuss the regulation of PFAS and the development of a national management plan.
The summit also acted as:
- a platform for exchange of ideas about the regulation of PFAS
- a forum to fast-track the development of a nationally consistent approach to the environmental regulation of PFAS
- an opportunity to test options to be included in a draft PFAS national management plan.
Options for stakeholder consultation on the draft PFAS national management plan will be considered by Australian environmental regulators in the months following the summit.