About Wenning Environmental

Wenning Environmental is a professional consulting firm specializing in science-based, data-driven analysis of environmental challenges arising from chemical accidents, contamination, natural disasters, and investments in emerging technologies, products, and infrastructure. 

Richard Wenning is an ecotoxicologist and environmental risk assessment specialist with 40 years of experience leading environmental impact studies and ecological and human health risk assessments. His work focuses on characterizing exposure pathways and quantifying injuries, damages, and risks associated with chemical contamination, industrial accidents, resource development, and natural disasters.

Mr. Wenning advises companies and government agencies on the interpreting environmental injuries and risks, and selecting sustainable, science-based remediation and restoration strategies. His expertise encompasses evaluating the environmental benefits, risks, and costs of various site remediation options aimed at mitigating contamination and restoring air quality, ecological functions (including ecosystem services), groundwater, sediments, soil, and surface waters. A strong advocate for evidence-based decision-making, he promotes the use of science-based targets to achieve environmental goals for environmental restoration and cleanup of chemical pollution.

Mr. Wenning has leadership experience managing complex environmental investigations. He frequently collaborates with multi-disciplinary teams of civil and environmental engineers, ecologists, health professionals, resource economists, and specialists in regulatory compliance, scientific communication, and public engagement. He has directed site-specific and regional-scale ecological investigations and monitoring studies in the U.S. and several other countries. Common to this work is a focus, retrospectively, on the environmental consequences of accidents and contaminated sites or, prospectively, on the likely impacts of emerging technologies and resource development projects.

He has participated in scientific review panels organized by businesses, trade groups, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. He has led seminars and given numerous technical presentations. He has published 100+ papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature addressing various chemical and environmental risk issues. He served nearly 20 years, until 2022, as Editor-in-Chief of the SETAC peer-reviewed international science journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM). In 2024-25, he is collaborating with a global team of experts to publish the 2nd edition of a state-of-practice book on sediment quality assessment and management.