Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1977
  • M.S., Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, 1973
  • B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Rochester, 1970
Professional Affiliations
  • American Chemical Society — ACS
  • Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry — SETAC
  • Association for Environmental Health and Sciences Foundation - AEHS
  • International Society of Environmental Forensics — ISEF
  • American Society for Testing and Materials — ASTM
  • American Bar Association (associate member)

As an environmental scientist and strategic advisor on environmental issues, Dr Boehm has conducted investigations for, consulted with, and advised industrial, legal, and government clients on scientific matters involving regulatory issues and legal claims associated with chemical contaminants in the environment. The main pillars of his professional work include analyzing and explaining the environmental distributions and fates hazardous chemical and petroleum releases, and ecological effects from chemical exposures. His work also includes the evaluation risks and damages due to climate change factors and extreme weather events.

Dr. Boehm is a leading practitioner and a recognized expert in the fields of natural resource damage assessments (NRDA) for oil spills and contaminated sites; maritime environmental incidents; natural gas geochemistry; and the environmental and forensic chemistry of crude and refined petroleum; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other organic chemicals; and natural gas geochemistry. His practice also directly involves the environmental fate and transport of chemicals as well as exposure and impact assessment.

Dr. Boehm's consulting work has focused both historical legacy and contemporary chemical releases and migration from facilities including: oil refineries, fuel terminals, pipelines, and offshore platforms; manufactured gas plants (MGPs); integrated steel mills; pulp and paper mills; other active and legacy manufacturing sites; and natural gas storage fields. Many of his projects involve aspects of historical reconstruction of chemical releases; chemical fingerprinting; divisibility and apportionment; allocation at CERCLA and OPA multiparty sites; and chemical exposure and injury assessment.

His extensive knowledge of the strategic application and practice of environmental chemistry and forensics has contributed to the published literature and to legal matters on source identification, fate, and transport of PAHs, PCBs, other chlorinated organics, solvents (TCE, PCE), stable isotopes, and metals. He was one of the early and formative practitioners in the area of petroleum fingerprinting.

Dr. Boehm is well-known internationally in the field of aquatic and marine pollution, especially matters involving coastal and urban areas. His scientific consulting work over 44 years has been interwoven with oil spill scientific assessments in relation to: emergency response, NRDA, as well as civil and criminal complaints arising from these matters. He has investigated and published extensively on the fate and effects of many major oil spills around the world (e.g., Amoco Cadiz; Haven; Ixtoc 1; Exxon Valdez; Arabian Gulf War spill; BP - Deepwater Horizon). In the NRDA practice area he has also been engaged in numerous cases at CERCLA and state sites, where he has provided expert technical support on exposure and ecological injury assessment; the determination of baseline or background; divisibility and apportionment of contamination, including the applicability of CERCLA's "petroleum exclusion."

Dr. Boehm is an experienced consulting and testifying expert on a range of legal matters involving environmental claims: apportionment and allocation; NRDA; remediation and insurance cost recovery; toxic torts; class action cases; and maritime cases under the Clean Water Act and MARPOL. Dr. Boehm has published extensively in scholarly journals, is an associate editor of two prestigious journals, and has been appointed to serve on several national panels on environmental/marine pollution and has served on several National Research Council panels.