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Thomas L. Deardorff, Ph.D.

Senior Managing Scientist

EcoSciences

Professional Profile


Dr. Deardorff possesses a broad scope of experience commensurate with previous employment in academia, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and private industry. Among Dr. Deardorff’s areas of expertise are: constructed wetlands for industrial effluent treatment; wetlands mitigation and restoration; calculating loss of value and subsequent reestablishment costs for forest and agricultural lands damaged by forest fires; environmental contamination associated with large fires; water quality and industrial wastewater treatment; environmental impacts to aquatic ecosystems; investigations on the source, transport, fate, and effects of chemicals in the environment with particular expertise in contaminants such as dioxins and furans, PCBs, PAHs, and chlorinated phenols; oil spill investigations; and litigation support.

For over 15 years, Dr. Deardorff worked in the pulp and paper industry as a Human and Environmental Health Advisor. Dr. Deardorff understands the various paper mill processes and the potential impacts process changes have on the quality of wastewater released by the mills. He also served as a customer advocate for environmental issues with the industry such as paper recycling and sustainable forestry practices. The use of constructed wetlands for the treatment of industry wastewater has also been a focus for Dr. Deardorff in recent years. He has built several large treatment wetlands in the US, which have kept facilities in compliance with permits, saved clients millions of dollars, and enhanced the surrounding environment. His constructed wetland projects include capping of contaminated soils, beneficial reuse of solid-waste streams, landfill leachate treatment, habitat development, and wastewater treatment. Dr. Deardorff also is involved in wetland restoration and mitigation projects in the US and he participates on an Exponent team advising the Iraq Ministry of the Environment of achieving the best management practices of wetland restoration of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Dr. Deardorff also chaired the Health Effects committee of the U.S. Forest & Paper Association in Washington, DC for over a decade leading its research efforts in areas such as worker exposures (e.g., inhalation of cellulose, wood dust, chloroform, hydrogen sulfide, acetaldehyde, acrolein), epidemiology, the US EPA’s dioxin reassessment, forestry related issues and endocrine disruption. Dr. Deardorff was also involved in the associated State, Federal, and Global regulatory interactions. Dr. Deardorff’s Ph.D. research addressed the risks to humans for infections with parasitic diseases while ingesting raw or inadequately cooked fresh or marine foods, such as sushi and sashimi. He worked with these zoonotic diseases for more than a decade at the University of Hawaii’s School of Medicine, the University of South Alabama’s School of Medicine, and the FDA. Dr. Deardorff is extensively published.

  • Ph.D., Biology, University of Southern Mississippi, 1980
  • M.A., Zoology, University of Northern Colorado, 1975
  • B.A., Science, University of Denver, 1969