Dr. Pennington's profile

- C u r r e n t A c t i v i t i e s -

Dr. Pennington joined the Soil and Waste Unit, Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), European Commission (EC) Joint Research centre (JRC), Ispra, in Italy, in March 2003.

Dr. David Pennington’s research focuses on the development, analysis, evaluation, and use of cutting-edge tools in support of waste reduction and management policy within the European Commission. This research particularly relates to detailed risk assessment, life cycle assessment, and to spatially/temporally resolved multimedia/multi-pathway chemical impact modelling. Policy support is provided from an overall European impact reduction perspective in the context of community issues such as sewage sludge disposal and waste reduction.

- B i o g r a p h y -

^N^{ottiongham (England)}

David William Pennington was born in West Bridgford, a small town on the edge of Nottingham, in the summer of 1968. Nottingham is a charming city in the heart of England, with many attractions such as a network of caves in the sandstone under the city, a pub dating back over 900 years, the birthplace of D.H. Lawrence and the nearby Sherwood Forest, the former home of Robin Hood.

^U^{niversity
of Surrey}From October 1986 until June 1990, Dr. Pennington studied for a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey, in the south of England. During this period he completed two six-month industrial training placements. At Fuel & Combustion Technology Ltd. (UK), in addition to on-site investigations of industrial processes, he gained experience in laboratory modelling of combustion systems using suspended beads and acid/alkaline flame simulations. This placement was followed by six months at Dow Chemical Canada Inc., near Edmonton in Alberta, primarily working on dust handling systems and extruder temperature control for the fabrication of styrofoam boarding.

^A^{dvanced
Mechanics & Engineering Ltd.}
After graduating from the University of Surrey, Dr. Pennington joined Advanced Mechanics & Engineering Ltd. for a two year period as a trainee consultant engineer. There he participated in projects like modelling the consequences of off-shore hydrocarbon releases in terms of platform worker safety, statistical safety analysis of chemical conveyance by road transport and electrical hazardous area classification.

^H^{ong
Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)}
In 1993, Dr. Pennington accepted a postgraduate teaching/research assistant scholarship at HKUST's Department of Chemical Engineering. Under the supervision of the department head, Professor Po Lock Yue, he completed postgraduate courses in environmental engineering and his Ph.D. thesis; A Pollution Prevention Tool for Continuous Chemical Processes (P2TCP); in 1997. This doctoral research involved both the development of an expert system to help identify alternatives for chemical process flow diagrams, during both the conceptual and the retrofit stages of design, and a tool to help rapidly compare process alternatives in terms of the environmental burden of their emissions.

.^U^{nited
States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)}
Dr. Pennington accepted a research fellowship in 1997 and joined the Systems Analysis Branch of the US EPA National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) in Cincinnati, Ohio. There he pursued his interests in the area of environmental impact comparison tools to support the life cycle assessment (LCA) of products, chemical screening and process design. Key research projects and activities included: (1) the development of a straightforward methodology to help it eratively screen chemicals using multimedia fate models in terms of their overall persistence and their capability to be transported over long distances in the environment; (2) participation in the US Persistent Bio accumulative and Toxic Pollutants Initiative (PBTI) expert working group; (3) collaboration in the development of Pollution Prevention Progress (P2P), a database tool for the classification of impacts associated with chemicals, and the Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemicals (TRACI), a program which aids the user to characterize and compare chemicals and emissions in the context of environmental burden; (4) participation in SETAC Europe life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) working groups on the fate and exposure, human toxicological effects and ecological toxicological effects of chemicals and emissions; (5) and co-organisation of the EPA/UNEP International Life Cycle Impact Assessment Workshops in Brussels 1998 and Brighton 2000.

^N^{ational
Institute for Resauces and the Environment (NIRE)}
In the Summer of 2000, funded by a fellowship from the UK Royal Society, Dr. Pennington spent two months at NIRE (now called AIST) with the life cycle assessment (LCA) group of the Energy Resources Department. There he initiated the development of a chemical fate and exposure model to support Japan National Life Cycle Assessment Initiative, which is co-ordinated by JEMAI . The multimedia, multi-region model outputs provide long-term concentration and human exposure estimates associated with chemical emissions into the environment, which help to facilitate the calculation of comparison indicators (characterization factors) in the context of toxicological impacts. Both best estimate, with uncertainty distributions, as well as site specific indicators are calculated. Novel aspects of this multimedia modelling research included consideration of hydrologically-defined surface water boundaries (known as watersheds), atmospheric advection patterns and the role of coastal waters in multimedia chemical fate models

^S^{wiss Federal Institute of Technology -
Lausanne (EPFL)}Summer 2000 to 2003, Dr. Pennington conducted research at the Swiss Federal Institute, developing a spatially resolved prototype for chemical fate and human exposure in Western Europe. This prototype, IMPACT 2002, is a state-of-the-art impact assessment methodology that supports comparative risk assessment and , more specifically, LCA. The methodology encoded in IMPACT 2002 builds on the earlier prototypes developed for Japan, facilitating the comparison of pollutants emitted during the life cycle of a product in terms of the risk of a (eco)toxicological impact and the potential consequences. These activities also provided inputs to a related European 5th Research Framework Programme project, OMNIITOX (www.omniitox.org). OMNIITOX aims to enhance the capability of industry and government to select more environmentally benign chemicals and processes, ultimately leading to products with the potential and advantages of an improved life-cycle performance. This project built on four industrial sector workshops; (automotive, detergents, pulp & paper, cosmetics); associated case study work packages; a cross-comparison of environmental risk and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methods; as well as the application, definition, and identification of improvements for toxicological impact characterisation.

The views & opinions expressed in these pages are not necessarily those of the creators, authors or organisations.

Updated on 01/Jul./2004

- C o n t a c t I n f o r m a t i o n -

Address

Soil and Waste Unit
Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES)
European Commission (EC) Joint Research centre (JRC)

T.P. 460
Via E. Fermi 1
21020 Ispra (Va)
Italy

Telephone
Fax.

+39 0332 785880
+39 0332 785601

URL

http://ies.jrc.cec.eu.int/
http://www.geocities.com/dwpennington/

david.pennington@jrc.it
dwpennington@yahoo.com (for personal messages)