PERC is pleased to announce that Professor Ian Shaw will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming conference The Lives and Afterlives of Plastic. Professor Shaw is an author, broadcaster and academic.
He has worked in government science, the pharmaceuticals industry and in several universities. He rose to the dizzy administrative heights as Pro Vice-Chancellor (Science) at the University of Canterbury, until he defected to the world of real science in 2009. He is now Professor of Toxicology at the University of Canterbury
Ian is the author of three books on food and the environment, edited a major work on estrogen mimics in food, a feature writer for The Press, a regular on Radio NZ National’s This way Up and TV NZ (What’s Really in Our Food?), and has published over 100 articles in scientific journals.
His research interest for the past 20-years has been the cellular and human effects of estrogen mimics in food and the environment, with particular reference to environmental estrogens from plastics and their impact on human and ecosystem health.
Professor Shaw is a fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royals Society of Chemistry. He won the NZ Association of Scientists Science Communicator Award in 2009, but is most proud of being awarded Science Lecturer of the Year by the University of Canterbury Student’s Association in 2009, 2013, 2014 and 2016.
In his presentation Ian Shaw will explore the effects of plastics on the environment and human health. He will look at the key roles of plasticisers in plastics manufacture and their implications as sex hormone mimics for both humans and animals. He’ll outline the environmental degradation of some plastics and the degradation products’ impacts on environmental health. Finally, to strike a balance, the benefits of plastics – particularly in the food industry – will be explored and these benefits set in the context of the steadily increasing risk profile of many of the most commonly used plastics.
The Lives and Afterlives of Plastic is a nearly carbon-neutral conference taking place entirely online from the 26th of June to the 14th of July, 2017.
