Jana Weiss

About me

I finished my Ph.D. in environmental chemistry at MMK in Stockholm 2006, mainly focusing on analysis of organic environmental pollutants in a variety of matrices, e.g. blood, milk, food. My thesis was entitled “Human exposure to persistent organic pollutants: Illustrated by four case studies in Europe”. Between 2007 and 2009 I had a first post doc position at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) in Amsterdam. The work performed there was implementing the Effect-Directed Analysis (EDA) approach which combines fractionation techniques and bioassays to guide the identification of key toxicants. Much focus was set toward chemical identification strategies of unknown chemicals of concern. I also broadened my experience into toxicology and to use in vitro assays. In 2009 I worked for the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy for 2.5 years, at the Institute for Environmental and Sustainability (IES). There I gained insight and experience how to work for the European Commission and was involved in a project supporting the Stockholm Convention to facilitate the Global Monitoring of priority pollutants.  In October 2011 I went back to IVM as senior researcher where I was involved in national and international projects, e.g. PERFOOD (http://www.perfood.eu/), PHARMAS (http://www.pharmas-eu.org/) and SUPFES (http://www.supfes.eu/).

Between 2012-2018 I was the coordinator of the FORMAS supported project MiSSE (Mixture Assessment of EDCs) at ACES, using cats as models for indoor exposure (https://www.aces.su.se/misse/). More than 20 articles were published and 2 doctoral theses, together showing that we are exposed to a wide range of EDCs via household dust. We could demonstrate that a mixture of ca 25 dust relevant chemicals could constitute a health risk on the thyroid system at realistic exposure levels.

Between 2016-2019 I had a 60% position at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment (IVM) at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Uppsala  where I was involved in the coordination of the project APPLICERA, focusing on identification of key-soil quality indexes and soil functions for an improved contaminated soil remediation strategy.

Today I am coordinating the Formas funded project RiskMix (https://www.aces.su.se/riskmix/). Together with PhD student Josefin Engelhardt we will investigate chemical mixtures of EDCs and go into depth in the exposure assessment of different populations. I am also the coordinator of FELIX, a follow up project of MiSSE where we focus on one of the chemical groups of major concern, i.e. the PFASs. In FELIX we look at health outcomes in pet cats and relate to their PFAS exposure from the home environment. For more information visit our website.