These presentations will include case studies our Past-Presidents have been involved with during their careers and difficult IH issues they tackled in their areas of IH expertise.

• Stephen Davis plans to discuss the CIH Expert Witness: A View from the Trenches and the Benches. The achievement of certification in the Comprehensive Practice of Industrial Hygiene (CIH) is viewed by many law firms as the minimum qualification to be considered an expert on exposure assessments in the courtroom. Clearly, the CIH is just a beginning of the process. Mr. Davis will discuss his experience in investigative process, in deposition, and in the courtroom. Respect for science, balance, integrity, and analytics will be discussed.

• Dan Cox plans to talk about “Learning from Past Mistakes: Asbestos to Mold, PCM to PCR”. In the 1980s, the public health community had an opportunity to embrace TEM as the analytical method for asbestos air samples and to put the deeply flawed surrogate PCM method to rest. However, TEM was officially declared to be “too expensive”. Despite the fact that TEM analysis is much less expensive today, the PCM method persists and continues to be used, often inappropriately. Apples are assessed by counting oranges. Today, most airborne mold spore samples are collected on Air-O-Cell or similar cassettes and analyzed microscopically using the “non-viable” spore count method. Distinguishing individual mold species using this method is a challenge. For example, all Penicillium and Aspergillus spores are reported as a single category: “Pen/Asp”. In many cases, once again, apples are assessed by counting oranges. A rapid method exists for quantifying individual species of Penicillium and Aspergillus spores in air samples: PCR. Yet, PCR is being labeled as “too expensive”. Are we about to make the same mistake with mold that was made with asbestos, endorsing a flawed surrogate method rather than embracing a better method?