Professional Profile
Ann Verwiel is Director of ToxStrategies’ Exposure Sciences Practice and a Senior Managing Scientist. Ms. Verwiel has more than 20 years of experience in environmental consulting in the areas of human health risk assessment, site assessment, and environmental regulation. Over her career, she has focused on integrating risk assessment into an overall risk management approach to problem definition, investigation, and mitigation. She has successfully applied this approach in negotiations with regulatory agencies and public groups to develop cost-effective investigations, assessments, and mitigation strategies. She has also studied the science behind using cumulative impact assessments to assess health conditions in vulnerable communities. She has published and presented papers on a wide variety of topics, including probabilistic risk assessment (Monte Carlo analysis), environmental fate and transport of contaminants, and environmental auditing.
Ms. Verwiel has managed and conducted numerous human health risk assessments that addressed a wide variety of chemicals in soil, soil vapor, air, and groundwater. Petroleum, aerospace, electronics, mining, and MGP sites are among some of the most common sites for which she has performed these risk assessments. She has evaluated the chemical signatures, transport mechanisms and ultimate fate, and likely current and future human exposures as key first steps in the health risk evaluation. She has worked to develop investigation strategies and assess exposure to indoor and ambient air, which included evaluating air emission sources, modeling, soil vapor measurements, and indoor/ambient air measurements. At sites where volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are present in the subsurface, she has addressed the potential existence of a vapor intrusion exposure pathway using modeling and measurement approaches.
Ms. Verwiel has a detailed understanding of a broad cross section of environmental regulations, which she has applied to regulatory impact analyses, environmental compliance, and training programs. She has evaluated potential impacts of new regulations on operating facilities and new developments, assessed compliance at operating facilities with a wide variety of environmental regulations, and developed training materials to help regulatory agencies establish their requirements clearly and help regulated entities comply. She has conducted air toxics analysis to meet the requirements of California Proposition 65, the AB2588 Toxic “Hot Spots” Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
Ms. Verwiel also has communicated risk to formal public groups, such as Restoration Advisory Boards, as well as the general public, in open meetings and direct written communications. She has worked with regulatory public participation specialists, public affairs officers, and others to develop written summaries and presentation materials to convey complex technical issues to the public. She has provided litigation support for several projects involving disputes between owners and operators, alleged air emissions exposures, and Proposition 65 litigation.