Environmental Forensics: Chemical Contamination and Biological Harm

This category is devoted to forensic environmental investigations and expert evidence in cases where chemical contamination of air, water, soil, sediments, food webs, or biological tissues is suspected, alleged, or demonstrated to have caused or contributed to mortality, injury, reproductive failure, developmental abnormalities, or population decline in wildlife and other organisms.

The category includes court-appointed and party-appointed expert examinations, civil, criminal, administrative, regulatory, insurance, and public-interest proceedings, as well as pre-litigation inquiries and independent scientific assessments. Contributions may address sampling strategy and chain of custody; analytical chemistry and laboratory quality assurance; identification and source attribution of contaminants; reconstruction of exposure pathways; toxicological, pathological, ecological, and epidemiological evidence; spatial and temporal analysis; differential diagnosis; causal inference; uncertainty; and the preparation, evaluation, or criticism of expert opinions.

Particular attention is given to the distinction between detecting environmental contamination, establishing biological exposure, demonstrating adverse effects, attributing individual or population-level harm, and assigning legal responsibility. The category therefore examines not only laboratory findings, but also the validity of the reasoning through which analytical results are connected to biological mortality or ecological decline.

The category welcomes case studies, methodological papers, critical reviews, comparative analyses, reconstructions of contamination events, and examinations of expert reports and judicial or administrative decisions. Inclusion in this category does not imply that chemical causation has been established. Each case must be evaluated through transparent, reproducible, and evidence-based reasoning, with explicit consideration of competing explanations, evidentiary limitations, and the degree of scientific uncertainty.