Kathy
Phillips
A Bit About Kathy
Nation Partners
Principal
Presentation Details
Kathy Phillips is a Ph.D. chemical engineer with over 12 years’ experience investigating and remediating contaminated sites and assessing human health risk. Prior to environmental consulting, she performed environmental research in both Australia and the United States, including a doctoral thesis project in which she applied computational chemistry to probe and predict the behaviour of organic chemicals in the environment.
Dioxins and furans are produced during combustion processes and as byproducts from some industrial processes. They are Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention, which creates obligations for countries to reduce and, where feasible, eliminate their release. A large body of work to understand the sources, presence, and health effects of dioxins and furans in Australia was completed under the National Dioxins Program in the early 2000s. Since that time, the state of knowledge has advanced internationally, without being reflected in Australian guidance. Given the widespread presence of dioxins and furans in the environment, their ongoing generation, and their toxicity, it is important to understand how to navigate the often confusing and continually evolving landscape for assessing health risks.