Great Ecology’s Senior Biochemist, Dr. Ioana G. Petrisor directed a workshop this week on “Classic and Emerging Environmental Forensics Techniques and Applications” at the Association for Environmental Health and Sciences (AEHS) conference in San Diego. This workshop reviewed classic and emerging forensic techniques used for age-dating, source identification, and cost allocation, emphasizing on effective strategy building from both scientific and legal perspectives.

Cutting-edge forensic techniques such as chiral fingerprinting, position-specific isotopic analysis (PSIA), mineralogical fingerprinting and dendroecology (tree-ring fingerprinting), were discussed and presented through several international case studies including:

• Evaluating the source of gasoline samples through focused fingerprinting (combining information from chemical and isotopic fingerprinting);

• Distinguishing between closely related crude oils by targeted fingerprinting focused on n-alkanes, Pristane, Phitane and certain biomarkers (isomer pairs);

• Establishing site specific clean-up limits at an historical foundry in France using mineralogical fingerprinting (combining scanning electron microscopy with chemical elemental analysis);

• Determining the occurrence and age of middle distillate releases at a historical gas station in the U.S.

Ioana G. Petrisor, Ph.D.

Dr. Petrisor is a biochemist with 21 years of experience, specializing in environmental forensics and litigation support. She is a member of the AEHS Scientific Advisory Board and a forensic instructor for the organization. Dr. Petrisor has served as an expert witness in California, testifying on issues associated with environmental contamination.