Professional summary

As a pollution scientist at UKCEH, Richard Cross leads the development of new methodologies for environmental risk assessment alongside managing and coordinating delivery of projects exploring the exposure and effects of particulate pollutants in the natural world such as nanomaterials and microplastics. Richard's work has focused on understanding the specific fate and behaviours of engineered nanomaterials and micro/nanoplastics and how this relates to their biological interactions. In particular, he is interested in how we can establish robust and reproducible methods to quantify plastic pollution in the environment so that the evidence base for possible policy and societal interventions is sound.

Richard is lucky enough for his work to take him out of the office from time-to-time (read: to sewage treatment works etc.), developing representative approaches to monitoring and characterising plastic contamination in the environment.

Another topic of interest for Richard is how we can take myriad and complex scientific findings and translate this into pragmatic and effective ways to understand risk and protection of the environment. In recent projects e.g. the European Union’s Horizon2020 project GRACIOUS, Richard has taken a keen interest in how we think about grouping of chemicals and materials for risk assessment, with the principle of the 3Rs in mind to reduce and perform more humane animal testing.

Memberships: SETAC Europe. Royal Society of Chemistry Affiliate Membership. Committee member of BSI EH/003/06/04 Microplastics in water, providing UK input into microplastics work programme under the Water Quality - ISO/TC147/SC6/WG16 & ISO/TC147/SC2/JWG1. Member of ad-hoc Microplastics Expert Group under CEN-TC444 “Environmental characterization of solid matrices".

Selected publications