Jürg Oliver Straub

Biography

Jürg Oliver Straub is a Swiss biologist with a Dr phil summa cum laude in vertebrate morphology from the University of Basle, Switzerland (1985). He started work in the environmental Protection Department of F.Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd in Basle in 1987. After an intermediate three years as the Curator of the Vivarium in the local zoo, he re-joined the Roche Group SHE (Safety, Health & Environmental Protection) Department in 1995, where he worked as the Environmental Risk Assessor for Roche from 1998 to his statutory retirement on reaching the age of 65 at the end of October 2019.
From 1998, Oliver was responsible for environmental risk assessments for Roche pharmaceuticals. He was also involved in investigating potential environmental problems from the production of pharmaceuticals at Roche, including intermediates and ancillary compounds. He participated in national and international research programmes on fate, effects and risks of pharmaceuticals in the environment and was an occasional reviewer for scientific journals in this field. For the European and international chemical industry associations (CEFIC and ICCA), he produced four comprehensive substance information data sets (SIDS) and risk assessments on behalf of Roche, addressing physico-chemical, human-health and environmental hazards and risks for Citric acid, Isophytol, Linalool and Pseudoionone, all of which were subsequently endorsed by the OECD.
Oliver was the voting Roche representative to the European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals (ECETOC, Brussels) 1999–2019; a member of the Experts' Commission for Ecotoxicology of the Swiss Federal Department for the Environment, Traffic, Energy and Communication 2000–2011; a stakeholder member of the ERAPharm project on environmental risk assessment of pharmaceuticals in the EU 6th Framework Research Programme 2005–2007; an industry expert in the German START programme on pharmaceuticals in drinking water 2006–2008; a member of the Advisory Board of the EU NoMiracle programme on assessing risks of multiple stressors 2005–2009; a member of the International Scientific Council for the Rovaltain Ecotoxicology and Environmental Toxicity Centre planned near Valence (France) 2009–2012; a member of the Advisory Board of the PHARMAS project on environmental assessment of antibiotics and cytostatics in the EU 7th Framework Research Programme 2011–2015; a stakeholder member of TransRisk, a German project on risks of emerging contaminants, transformation products and pathogens in the water cycle 2012–2015; a member of the Working Group on Pharmaceuticals in the Environment of EFPIA, the European Federation of Pharmaceuticals Industries and Associations 2012–2019; a member of the IMI research programme iPiE on Intelligent assessment of Pharmaceuticals In the Environment 2015–2019; and a member of the advisory board of ChemPop, a UK programme on comparing and matching historical faunistic and floristic data from UK rivers, fields and coastal seas with measured and use data of chemical substances 2018–2022.
Oliver is now working as an independent consultant for pharmaceuticals environmental risk assessment. He is still an occasional peer reviewer for manuscripts in the field of environmental science.
Oliver is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (London, UK) ; a member of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC; Brussels, Belgium); as well as an Honorary Member of the Pessoa Society (Oegstgeest, The Netherlands). He used to be a Chartered Biologist (1992–2022).
A CV and a list of publications are available on request (era.dr.j.o.straub@gmail.com).