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Professor Sally Gaw is an environmental chemist specialising in emerging contaminants, environmental toxicology, and the chemical fate and transport of pollutants across air, water, soil, and marine systems. Her research focuses on microplastics, airborne microplastics, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), agrichemicals, trace metals, and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs), with a particular emphasis on contaminant pathways, transformation processes, and ecological and human health risks. She has a particular interest in understanding how products we use in everyday life lead to environmental pollution and identifying how we can reduce the associated environmental burden.

 

She leads interdisciplinary research on water and soil pollution, coastal ecosystem health, Antarctic environmental protection and human exposure to contaminants, integrating advanced analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry, and environmental monitoring to characterise pollutants and assess their environmental impacts. Her work also examine the role of pollution in global environmental change.

 

Sally’s research informs environmental risk assessment, regulatory science, and sustainable chemical management, contributing to evidence‑based environmental policy in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. Her work aligns strongly with global priorities in environmental chemistry, pollution mitigation, water quality, and ecosystem resilience.

 

She collaborates widely across government, industry, and international research networks, and supervises postgraduate students working on environmental chemistry, pollution mitigation, environmental monitoring, and ecosystem resilience.