The Global Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Chris's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

About Chris

My research focuses on the mechanisms controlling exposure of biota to environmental pollution. This combines collection of experimental data in conjunction with the development of process description models. My group has developed a variety of assessment tools, including an in-vitro gut model to assess the bioaccessibility of pollutants in the human gut, model systems to determine uptake of soil contaminants by plants and earthworms and biokinetic models for human exposure. These are designed as robust approaches for practical application and have been applied to support the Interdepartmental Group on Health Risks from Chemicals and the Environment Agency’s Contaminated Land Exposure Model.

Ongoing research addresses the role of soil organic carbon in modifying pollutant exposure and the parallels between pollutant and carbon cycling in soils, the latter is critical to the delivery of a range of ecosystem services. This work contrasts high-level analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance with rapid spectral methods to study soil responses to environmental perturbations with aim of developing field deployable tools for practitioners. More recent work has adopted a transdisciplinary approach to support low input farming and agriplastic reduction in an international setting.

Contact Chris

christopher.collins@plymouth.ac.uk