Dr Jon Barber
Marine Chemist and Organohalogens Technical Manager
Jon is a marine chemist based at Cefas’ Lowestoft laboratory. He has over 20 years of experience of conducting research into the fate of organohalogens in the atmospheric and marine environments. He graduated in Marine Biology from Swansea University in 1995 and also obtained a Master’s degree there in 1997 in Environmental Analysis and Health. He obtained a PhD in Environmental Analytical Chemistry from Lancaster University in 2003 and continued to work as a Postdoc in Kevin Jones’ group until 2008 working on the environmental fate of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs), chlorinated paraffins, hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In 2008, he joined Cefas as an analytical research chemist before taking over the role of technical manager for the Organohalogens team in 2009. His team works to ISO17025 standard and has been UKAS-certified for the analysis of PCBs in sediment since 2008. Other contaminants analysed include PFAS such as perfluorooctane sulphonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), polychlorinated dibenzodioxins/furans (PCDD/Fs) and dioxin-like PCBs, pharmaceuticals, flame retardants such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) and the chemicals that have replaced them on the market.
Jon’s research areas include levels and effects of contaminants in marine mammals, passive sampling of organic contaminants, and distribution of contaminants in sediment and fish. He has been the Cefas lead on contaminants in marine mammals since 2015 and is on the public steering group of the Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme (CSIP). He has also been the Cefas lead for the CSEMP contaminant monitoring programme since 2017 and sits on the OSPAR MIME, ICES Marine Chemistry Work Group (MCWG) and UK Chemicals Task Team (CTT) expert groups. Jon has published over 47 peer-reviewed papers and has a h-index of 32. He is a reviewer for a number of environmental chemistry journals, including Environmental Science and Technology, Science of the Total Environment and Environmental Pollution. He has co-supervised PhD students at Lancaster and Birmingham Universities.
Research publications: ResearchGate, Google Scholar
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