Researcher biography
Dr John Henry Nightingale is an environmental contaminant scientist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at QAEHS. He studies the fate and effects of emerging contaminants such as human and veterinary pharmaceuticals, plasticisers, surfactants and pesticides move between wastewater, manures, soils, water, plants and food. His work combines targeted and non-targeted screening techniques in tandem with environmental fate modelling tools to better understand the occurrence and fate of these entities in terrestrial and aquatic systems.
John’s PhD at the University of Leeds was run with Fera Science Ltd. It showed that the pH and redox potential of pig slurry change how fast veterinary antibiotics break down, and that the way manure is spread changes how much reaches water. Later field work showed that the regulatory groundwater model FOCUS PEARL can miss leaching risks at the concentrations actually found in the environment. As Scientific Project Lead at Leeds, he ran a 22-farm national survey that found more than 520 organic contaminants in English soils treated with biosolids, manures, wastewater treatment residuals, and bio digestate. A larger component of his work has involved building and validating tiered risk assessment frameworks for lesser studies exposure scenarios, one example of this work includes predicting the fate of human pharmaceuticals in the wastewater - soil - plant continuum using the chemical structure alone. With the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology he extended the National Honey Monitoring Scheme, finding 119 suspect contaminants in British hives, most of them human pharmaceuticals. He also led an international monitoring programme in Israel with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Volcani Institute. Across nine farms it covered treated wastewater irrigation, soils and maize grain, and the data are being used to test fate models of the wastewater–soil–plant continuum under real conditions. Additionally, John has had the privilege to be involved in monitoring programmes that span across Mexico, specifically looking at pesticide bioaccumulation into various species of freshwater fish.
John has also been involved in an array of topics that are not solely related towards the environmental fate or effects of organic residues in the environment. Some of these include, water quality as a global problem, forest learning community structures.
Before Leeds, John was a GLP Study Director in environmental fate at Fera Science, where he ran manure degradation studies for regulatory submissions on veterinary medicines. He collaborates widely with academic, industry and regulatory partners. He has taught environmental data science at MSc level and supervised PhD, MSc and undergraduate students.