People
Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith
NTN’s Senior Advisor, Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith trained as a negotiator in chemical disputes and has a PhD from Law Faculty, UTS Australia. She has campaigned in the area of chemicals policy and hazardous waste management for three decades working with NGOs, indigenous groups, national governments, UNEP and the OECD. Mariann participates in the technical working groups for Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and focuses on PFAS chemicals. Dr Lloyd-Smith was a member of the UN Expert Group on Climate Change and Persistent Organic Pollutants, and an advisor to the OECD for their Fracking Summit. Mariann is committed to community right to know and helped establish Australia’s National Pollutant Inventory.
Jo Immig
Jo Immig is Coordinator of the National Toxics Network. She has a degree in applied science and over 25 years experience as an advocate working in the non government sector on toxic pollution issues including pesticides, indoor air pollution, children’s environmental health, ocean pollutants and household and industrial chemical pollution. Jo currently represents the Australian environment movement on the industrial chemical regulator’s Strategic Consultative Committee. She is author of several books – Toxic Playground; Safer Solutions and Clearing the Air as well as numerous articles on sustainable living.
John Landos
John Landos is retired and an active volunteer across a range of areas; he holds a Bachelor of Economics degree from the Australian National University.
From 1996 to 2013 John was Principal of Quarantine and Inspection Resources Pty Ltd, a company specialising in institutional issues relating to biosecurity, food certification and food regulation.
Prior to 1996 he was a senior executive with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service for 15 years, during that period personally advising eight different Federal Ministers. From 1990 to 1994 he was head of Australia’s Animal and Plant Quarantine Service and responsible for all aspects of import biosecurity and export certification for the horticultural and grain sectors. He was directly responsible for the implantation of biosecurity detector dogs and the use of scanners as a screening tool to identify potential biosecurity risks.
Jane Bremmer
Jane Bremmer is based in Western Australia (WA) and has worked for environmental health and justice for more than 20 years. Currently the secretary and Zero Waste and Anti- incineration campaign coordinator for the National Toxics Network, Jane works collaboratively with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) in the Asia Pacific region and internationally with the more than 600 member organisations working for a zero waste and incinerator free future.
With a strong background in toxics disputes and environmental justice, grounded in her own personal experience living next to ‘WA’s worst toxic site’, Jane works to empower communities to defend their human rights to clean air, water and soil through the principles of ‘community right to know’ and access to independent science and expertise. As such, Jane through NTN, is also a member and works collaboratively with the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) representing more than 700 public interest ngos – working for a toxics free future at the highest level with the International Stockholm, Rotterdam and Basel conventions.
Jane coordinates a number of Western Australian local environmental health and justice groups working on air quality protection, toxics, waste management, pesticides and contaminated sites. The work of these groups resulted in the establishment of WA’s first ever Contaminated Sites Act. Jane has also served 10 years on the Australian National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) Community Engagement Forum, where major reforms were achieved to assess the large backlog of ‘existing chemicals’ in use in Australia that have not been assessed for human health or environmental impacts.
The protection of children’s health especially is Jane’s key motivation and underpins all her work. She was awarded the Sunday Times Pride of Australia Medal for environmental activism 2007.
Imogen Ingram
Imogen Ingram is of Polynesian and English descent, growing up in a bilingual household, and has been invested with the traditional leader’s title Te Pa Mataiapo of Takitumu in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. After university education in New Zealand, she worked there as an accountant before returning permanently to Rarotonga, where she became an environmental advocate. Her focus is on sustainable development issues, including the harmful impacts of climate change and pollution on ecosystems, particularly the ocean. Since the formation in 2005 of Island Sustainability Alliance CIS Inc. (ISACI) she has worked to raise awareness in Pacific SIDS about negative impacts of poor chemicals and waste management on human health and the environment. She has also implemented citizen-science projects aided by capacity building from IPEN (International POPs Elimination Network) and National Toxics Network, Australia (NTN). She has also received support from both networks for her advocacy work at both national and international levels on policy issues related to chemicals and wastes.
Lee Bell
Lee Bell is a senior researcher with the National Toxics Network and acts as the Mercury and POPs Policy Advisor for the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN). Lee has over twenty years experience in research and analysis of industrial pollution, hazardous waste, contaminate sites and associated issues. Mr Bell has authored a range of reports and articles on the trade and impact of mercury and other pollutants on the environment and human health. He is currently a member of the Basel Convention Small Intersessional Working Group (SIWG) on POPs waste, the Stockholm Convention BAT BEP and Dioxin Toolkit Expert Group and the SIWG on PCBs.
Dr Alison Bleaney
Dr Alison Bleaney is a rural GP based in Tasmania and as an environmentalist realises that a healthy environment sustains healthy people and communities. For over 15 years, she has been particularly interested in water quality, pollution and the use of pesticides and wetting agents in the landscape and how these adversely affect the land, water and air and human health. Modern toxicology with low dose effects, non-monotonic response curves, endocrine disruption, immune dysfunction and trans-generational effects of epigenetic effects are just a few of the issues she works on to try and convince Australian regulators to ensure safety testing and the principle of precaution when they allow chemicals/biocides into the environment. Climate change accentuates the issues of pollution whether it is pesticides, plastics or fossil fuels.
Dr Geralyn Mccarron
Dr Geralyn Mccarron has been a general practitioner in suburban Brisbane for 30 years. Since 2012 she has been involved with rural communities whose health and well-being has been impacted by unconventional gas. She has written two peer reviewed publications, one report and has made submissions to several State and Territory Inquiries.
