Richard Maunder, PhD, is an ecotoxicologist with over 20 years experience in fish ecotoxicology and the assessment of endocrine disruption in fish and amphibians. He has worked at government labs for the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and the Environment Agency. He worked in academia for 10 years conducting research on fish ecotoxicology, including his PhD on endocrine disruption in fish, and post‑doctoral projects on metal pollution in fish mucus and developing in vitro primary cell models as alternatives to in vivo fish tests. Richard then spent 12 years working in regulatory ecotoxicology as a Study Director for AstraZeneca and as the Principal Scientist at the good laboratory practice (GLP) contract research organisation (CRO) Scymaris Ltd. At Scymaris, Richard led endocrine disruption (ED) testing using fish and frogs, including participation in the validation of the new Zebrafish Extended One Generation Reproduction Test (ZEOGRT), setting up OECD 229, 234 and life-cycle tests, and developing a protocol for testing vitellogenin. He also collaborated with external pathologists to report the ED requirements for histology. He has also recently represented CROs at industry meetings on the current status and challenges for ED assessment. Richard was also technical lead for bioaccumulation testing, running a recent project on a complex chemical substance of unknown or variable composition, complex reaction products and biological materials (UVCB) with multiple constituent analyses to produce bio-magnification factors and equivalent bioconcentration factor data. This has led to further work testing larger ‘table’ sized fish for maximum residue concentrations in metabolism tests for human health. Richard has been a member of the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) Ecotoxicology working group since 2023 where he discusses current issues impacting the 3Rs in ecotoxicology. At wca Richard works in areas of weight of evidence assessments for ED chemicals and environmental risk assessments for pharmaceuticals under European Medicine Agency guidelines.
