8. Employment Chronology & Biosketch

2017 (29 December). Retired from federal civil service with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

1991-2017.  Branch Chief and Research Scientist, Analytical environmental chemistry research programs. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Las Vegas, Nevada.

1989-1991.  Technical Consultant, environmental chemistry, microbiology, and toxicology.

1987-1989.  Staff Scientist II, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley.

1979-1986.  Assistant Research Toxicologist, Sanitary Engineering and Environmental Health Research Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley.

1976-1979.  NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Toxicology and  Postdoctoral Associate in Microbiology, laboratory of Prof. Martin Alexander, Department of Agronomy, Cornell University.

1972-1976.  NIH Predoctoral Trainee in Toxicology, Department of Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis.

1976. Ph.D. Ecology. University of California, Davis, Department of Environmental Toxicology:  Daughton CG. 1976 "Parathion and Acclimated Bacteria: Interactions in the Chemostat and in Soil."  Ph.D. Thesis, Ecology, Chairman: Prof. Dennis P.H. Hsieh. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.x32371 

1971. BA, Biology. University of California, San Diego, Revelle College.  

christian.daughton -at- berkeley.edu 

Biosketch

Dr. Christian Daughton's scientific research career spanned 43 years, in academia (1972-1989) and federal civil service (1991-2018). His published works pioneered a number of new research areas involving the application of a wide spectrum of research disciplines. This work resulted in advancements adopted worldwide in public health. As Branch Chief at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development Laboratory (Las Vegas, Nevada), he pioneered EPA's involvement with a new class of pollutants called pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the late 1990s, research for which he was awarded the U.S. EPA's Gold Medal for Exceptional Service in 2008.  This work expanded the EPA's perspective on the extraordinarily diverse galaxy of unregulated, "emerging" contaminants. This work led to a new paradigm of environmental stewardship for minimizing environmental pollution by PPCPs — the Green Pharmacy — and catalyzed the EPA to help create the first national consumer take-back program for unused medications. In 2001, he created the new concept of monitoring sewage to estimate the real-time consumption of drugs at the local, community level. He expanded this concept to gauge community-wide health/disease by monitoring sewage for specific biomarkers. This work later became known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) and became the basis for monitoring the status and trends of Covid-19 infections worldwide.

Prior to joining the EPA in 1991, he was research toxicology faculty at University of California, Berkeley and a supervisory research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he directed research on fossil fuel oil shale wastes. He earned a B.A. in biology at the University of California, San Diego (Revelle College), and a Ph.D. in ecology from the Department of Environmental Toxicology at University of California, Davis. He performed postdoctoral research at Cornell University on microbial degradation of organophosphorus insecticides and chemical warfare agents.

Dr. Daughton's published works can be accessed  via his CV:

https://sites.google.com/site/daughton/refereed-articles

and via Google Scholar Profile:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DhSLTzsAAAAJ&hl=en