Peter deFur
Dr. Peter L. deFur is president of Environmental Stewardship Concepts (ESC), an independent private consulting firm. He is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where he conducts research on environmental health and ecological risk assessment. Dr. deFur has served on numerous state and federal advisory committees. Dr. deFur received B.S. and M.A. degrees in Biology from the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, and a Ph.D. in Biology (1980) from the University of Calgary, Alberta. He was a postdoctoral fellow in neurophysiology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Calgary, and an environmental fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1989. Dr. deFur held faculty positions at George Mason University and Southeastern Louisiana University before joining the staff of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in Washington, DC. In 1996, deFur formed ESC and accepted a part-time position at VCU. Dr. deFur presently serves as technical advisor to citizen organizations concerning the cleanup of contaminated sites at FUDS, CERCLA and RCRA sites around the country. His projects include the Housatonic River, MA; the Delaware River; Lower Duwamish River, WA; Rayonier site in Port Angeles, WA; Fox River, WI; Portland Harbor, OR and the Spring Valley site in Washington, DC. Many of these sites, and others on which he has worked, are contaminated with PCB’s and/or dioxins. Dr. deFur has extensive experience in risk assessment and ecological risk assessment regulations, guidance and policy. He served on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)/National Research Council (NRC) Risk Characterization Committee that prepared Understanding Risk. He served on a number of scientific reviews of U.S. EPA ecological and human health risk assessments, including the Framework for Cumulative Risk Assessment, the assessment for the WTI incinerator in Ohio and U.S. EPA’s Ecological Risk Assessment Guidelines. Dr. deFur served on three federal advisory committees for U.S. EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening and Testing Program, was chair of the peer review of U.S. EPA’s Dioxin Reassessment in 2000, and served on the NRC Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology from 1996- 1999.