Mike Gardner is an environmental analytical chemist who has over 40 years of experience in applied research and consultancy. Having graduated from Birmingham University, he worked for the National Coal Board and the Severn Trent Water Authority, before spending 30 years as a senior scientist with the Water Research Centre. For the past ten years he has been a principal chemist with the engineering company, Atkins Limited.
His main areas of interest and experience are the design and interpretation of environmental monitoring programmes and the assessment and control of related data quality.He has been responsible for the standard textbook for analytical quality control for UK water laboratories. He is a co-author of the UN ECE handbook on quality assurance in chemical analysis. His other interests include metal speciation the sources, forms, fate and effects of metals, pharmaceuticals and trace organic pollutants in the environment. He has supervised PhD research projects on sampling uncertainty and on the development of speciation-based environmental quality standards.
He has been the Chairman of National Marine Chemistry Advisory Group and of British Standards Institution Committees and CEN/ISO Group for Precision and Accuracy of Measurement and Sampling (Water Quality) and is a former member of the Standing Committee of Analysts Main Committee.
Mike’s recent work, over the past ten years, has focused on the coordination of the UKWIR Chemicals Investigation Programme. This is a large research programme undertaken collaboratively by UK regulators and the Water Industry that seeks to understand the fate of contaminants in wastewater treatment processes and to a develop justifiable and cost-effective responses to the Water Framework Directive.
Mike has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.