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Staying Ahead of Air Regulations: Best Practice for VOCs, PFAS and Emerging Contaminants

Available on Demand

Discover actionable insights to navigate the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of global air quality regulations, from traditional VOCs to emerging contaminants.

By viewing this expert forum, you will:

  • Understand the latest global regulatory developments and what they mean in practice for environmental and industrial air monitoring.
  • Learn best-practice, defensible sampling strategies for ambient air, indoor air quality, and emissions to ensure your data aligns with rigorous international standards.
  • Gain insights into future-ready thermal desorption and GC-MS workflows designed to tackle the complexities of trace-level airborne contaminants, including PFAS.

Event Overview

This 60-minute expert panel discussion explores the key challenges laboratories face in today's shifting regulatory environment. Industry experts will discuss questions from registrants with a focus on:

  • Sharing insights and lessons learned from decades of experience in implementing regulations.
  • Navigating the changing landscape of global air monitoring regulations and standard methods.
  • Overcoming the gap between analytical capability and data reliability.
  • Designing and implementing defensible sampling strategies across diverse environments.
  • Future-proofing laboratories against emerging airborne molecular contaminants.
  • Leveraging advanced thermal desorption (TD) and GC-MS workflows to deliver trace-level detection and method robustness.

Our panel brings together voices from instrument manufacturer Markes, as well as the US EPA and UK NPL—national governmental agencies that play major roles in the measurement and standardisation of air quality regulations. The panel will provide a comprehensive view of how to generate standards-aligned data and stay ahead of the regulatory curve.

Who should view it?

This expert forum is ideal for environmental laboratory managers, analytical chemists, regulatory specialists, and quality assurance professionals seeking to optimize air monitoring workflows, ensure regulatory compliance, and scale operations effectively.

What you need to know:

Format: On demand

Duration: 1 hour

Speakers

  • Caroline Widdowson Headshot

    Caroline Widdowson

    Director of Scientific Affairs, Markes, UK

    Dr Caroline Widdowson is a specialist in the sampling and analysis of trace-level volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds in solids, liquids and gases. She holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry and an MBA. She is currently Director of Scientific Affairs at Markes, an advanced analytical instrument manufacturer.

    Caroline works closely with international standards organizations, regulators, and scientific groups, supporting countries in the development of practical and reliable sampling and analytical methods. She is Chair of the UK national standards committee (BSI) for Indoor Air Quality and Convenor of ISO committee working groups that develop international standards for the measurement of VOCs in ambient, indoor, and in-vehicle air.

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  • Headshot of Dave Worton

    Dave Worton

    Principal Scientist, National Physical Laboratory, UK

    Dave Worton is the Science Area Leader for NPL’s Gas Metrology Group, providing the traceability that underpins gas composition measurements related to climate, air quality, health, advanced manufacturing, energy trading and fuel quality. Dave’s current research interests are focused around isotopic reference materials for deconvoluting natural and man-made greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen dioxide reference materials to underpin direct measurements in ambient air and multicomponent volatile organic compounds reference materials to improve the comparability of online chemical ionisation instruments like proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) and select ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS).

    He received a First Class Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the University of Nottingham, a Master's degree with distinction in Environmental Geochemistry from the University of Leeds, and a PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry from the University of East Anglia. Prior to joining NPL in 2015, he was a Research Specialist at the University of California, Berkeley and a Research Associate at Aerosol Dynamics Inc. Dave has over 20 years' experience of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques and has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers. He is a Chartered Chemist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and represents NPL at the Euramet-TC MC, CCQM Gas Analysis Working Group and on the BSI EH/2/3 and CEN TC264 standardisation committees.

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  • Ray Merril

    Ray Merrill

    Retired – Former Environmental Scientist, EPA, USA

    Dr. Ray Merrill is an internationally recognized environmental chemist with over 50 years of experience managing and performing environmental measurements, method development and evaluation, and quality assurance programs.

    He worked for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development from 1976 to 1987 before joining Radian Corporation to lead measurement development efforts on contract to the EPA. In 1999, he moved to Eastern Research Group, managing major field sampling and method development contracts for source and ambient air programs. Dr. Merrill returned to the EPA in 2010, joining the Emissions Measurement Center within the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, where he served until his retirement in 2024.

    During his tenure, Ray was the EPA’s primary author for Methods 201A/202 (fine and condensable particulate), Method 325A/B (passive fenceline VOCs), Performance Specification 18 (HCl continuous monitoring), and OTM 45 and OTM 50 for PFAS measurements from stationary sources. He also authored a major revision to EPA Method 23 for chlorinated dioxins/furans, PAHs, and PCBs, and wrote OTM 49, a new GC-MS/MS method for these air toxics.

    He remains active with the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM). When he is not mentoring or giving back to the environmental community, you will often find him racing his one-design sailboat on the lakes and rivers of North Carolina.

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  • Matthew Klee

    Matthew Klee (Moderator)

    Dr Matthew S. Klee is internationally recognized for contributions to the theory and practice of gas chromatography. His experience in chemical, pharmaceutical and instrument companies spans over 30 years. During this time, Dr Klee’s work has focused on elucidation and practical demonstration of the many processes involved with GC analysis, with the ultimate goal of improving the ease of use of GC systems, ruggedness of methods and overall quality of results. 

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