• News
  • Contact Us

Paul D. Boehm, Ph.D.

Group Vice President & Principal Scientist

Environmental Sciences

Professional Profile


Dr. Boehm has overall responsibility for Exponent’s Environmental business. He has devoted his 32 years of consulting experience to advising industrial, legal, and government clients on scientific aspects of: contaminated sediments and terrestrial sites; oil spills; and the use of environmental forensic methods to investigate background contamination, to chemically fingerprint contaminants to determine sources, to apportion contamination to allocate liabilities, and to reconstruct historical releases and doses. Dr. Boehm has provided scientific support to clients on environmental and toxic tort claim, maritime pollution cases, and other litigation matters, including providing expert testimony. His work as an analytical, environmental, and geochemist has involved petroleum hydrocarbons, fuel additives, natural gas, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlorophenols, chlorinated solvents (TCE, PCE), and other chemicals. A significant part of Dr. Boehm’s work has focused on oil refineries, fuel terminals, and offshore platforms; Superfund sites; manufactured gas plant (MGP); pulp and paper mills, and natural gas storage fields; medical exposures; and transactional disputes,. With regards to crude oil and fuel releases, he specializes in the reconstruction of release histories focusing on fuel chemistry associated with evolution of refining processes and the use of fuel additives such as alkylated leads, MTBE, TAME, and other compounds.

His main scientific focus has been on the environmental chemical aspects of aquatic and terrestrial contamination, groundwater, soils, and sediments. He has been engaged in numerous natural resource damage assessments (NRDAs) at oil spill and CERCLA sites where he has provided technical support on chemical sources, exposure and bioavailability, divisibility of contamination, apportionment, and allocation of associated liability. His extensive knowledge of the strategic application and practice of environmental forensics (geo-chemical fingerprinting, transport and fate, source attribution, and allocation) has been applied to numerous cases involving complex environmental liability and litigation matters.

As an oil spill expert, he has studied and published on the fate and effects of oil spills in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East - Exxon Valdez, Amoco Cadiz, and Gulf War.. As a natural gas and petroleum chemist and geochemist, he has also investigated geochemical aspects relating to the migration of natural gas from storage fields. His work has also included assessments of the exposure of people to petroleum contaminants in toxic tort cases.

He has been appointed to serve on several national panels on environmental/ marine pollution and has served on several National Research Council panels.

  • Ph.D., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1977
  • M.S., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1973
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Rochester, 1970