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Our Experience
Here is a small selection of the types of projects we have worked on in the past: In a recent project, we addressed health risk concerns for the City of Akron, Ohio. The local press had printed articles describing emissions from the city's municipal solid waste-to-energy facility as a "toxic witches' brew." Cambridge Environmental was called upon to assess immediate and long-term risks to health. We held a series of meetings with the Mayor's office, the press, and other concerned citizens; gathered relevant data on the facility and its environs; and developed a protocol for an holistic but efficient quantitative assessment. We presented and negotiated this protocol with the Ohio EPA and the Akron City Department of Health. The results of our analyses demonstrated that risks to health of residents most affected by stack emissions were negligible. We delivered a fully documented report to the Ohio EPA; the report was peer-reviewed and approved. Cambridge Environmental conveyed the results in a series of meetings and press conferences. Dissent was defused, and our client — the city — received high praise from the media and regulatory agencies for its expeditious and prudent handling of the matter. » Learn more about our Health & Environmental Risk Assessments
In another project, Cambridge Environmental assisted a manufacturer of arts and crafts materials in complying with regulations promulgated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission following passage of the Labeling of Hazardous Art Materials Act. These regulations required that the formulation of any material that might be used in an art or craft project be evaluated for potential chronic hazards to health. Cambridge Environmental toxicologists developed expected and worst-case exposure scenarios, conducted detailed reviews of the health effects of component chemicals, and rendered opinions about the specific health warnings that should appear on the product. Toxicologic reviews conducted early in product development uncovered potential problems that were corrected in a timely manner. » Learn more about our Technical Support for Regulatory Compliance
Cambridge Environmental helped a defendant successfully argue a Daubert motion by showing that the scientific testimony of the plaintiff’s causation witness was unreliable. The case had been brought by a young woman who had contracted leukemia and sued the manufacturer of the cleaning fluid, perchloroethylene, used in the dry-cleaning shop where she had briefly worked, claiming that exposure to perchloroethylene had caused her cancer. We took the lead in preparing a joint expert affidavit signed by one of our staff, an epidemiologist, and a hematologist that strongly criticized the scientific method used by the plaintiff’s expert epidemiologist. We offered detailed testimony before the judge and the physician-scientist she had appointed to assist her. The case was dismissed on summary judgment. » Learn more about our Litigation Support
A private company sponsored our research on the potency of asbestos as a cause of lung cancer. Existing estimates of this parameter had not been updated to account for results from about a decade of epidemiologic research; and prior attempts to combine epidemiologic studies were only semi-quantitative. We assimilated dose-response data from fifteen groups of asbestos-exposed workers detailed in 22 publications, using maximum likelihood techniques to obtain measures of the relationship between cumulative exposure to asbestos and relative risk of lung cancer. Our meta-analysis (Lash, Crouch, and Green, Occup. Environ. Med. 54:254-263, 1997) explored sources of heterogeneity in the dose-response coefficient, generating a potency estimate under a fixed-effect model and another under a random effects model. These estimates were 24-fold smaller and fourfold smaller, respectively, than the OSHA (1986) estimate relied upon for rule-making. » Learn more about our Research & Development services
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