Conny Östman
About me
I took my PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 1987 and started working as researcher at the Swedish National Institute of Occupational Health in 1988. I was appointed associate professor in Environmental Chemistry in 1994. In 1997 I started working at the Department of Analytical Chemistry at Stocholm University as Researcher and Senior Lecturer. In 2014 I was appointed Professor in Analytical Chemistry and started at the new Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry, and I have supervised/co-supervised fifteen PhD students.
My research work includes development and application of analytical methods including sampling, extraction, clean-up, and methods for separation and identification of chemical compounds using GC, HPLC, GC-MS, GC-MS/MS, LC-MS and LC-MS/MS techniques.
During the years my field of research has included areas such as indoor air pollutants (including flame retardants, plasticizers etc), emission of chemicals from computers and electronic equipment, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in human blood, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in various matrices, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons/compounds (PAH/PAC) in air, oil, soil, bitumen, curing smoke, stack gases etc, Shpolskii low temperature fluorescence, development of personal sampling equipment, development of hyphenated analytical techniques (coupled LC/GC and LC/GC/MS), etc.
Today my field of research is focused on textiles as a route to chemical exposure.
Teaching
Stockholm University
1998 - to present - Advanced Separation Methods (KA7006), 15 credits course at advanced level (2:nd cycle) running during the autumn semester. Course Director, teacher & examiner, and course development.
1998 - to present - Teaching chromatography and quantification in the Chemistry Bachelor Program (1:st cycle), and in other 1:st cycle programs, in the spring semester
1998 - 2004 - Course Director & Examiner for all diploma works in Analytical Chemistry.
2012 - present - Course Director & Examiner for all diploma works in Analytical Chemistry.
2015 - 2017 - Director of PhD studies in Analytical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry
2018 - present Program Director for Analytical Chemistry at Stockholm University.
Karolinska Institutet
2010 – to present – Teaching a one week course in basic statistics on the Dental Hygienist Program.
Research
Clothing textiles is a source to human exposure to chemicals that is very little investigated. In this project we have taken an exploratory chemical analysis approach to investigate what chemicals are present in clothing sold the open market. Our screening has demonstrated the presence of hundreds of chemicals in garments obtained from the retail market.
My present research focus on method development of target, suspect and non-target analytical methods with special focus on textile chemicals, investigating the chain from textile materials to waste water. It involves non-targeted analysis of chemicals in textile materials, development of analytical methods for chemicals in textiles, studies of textile to skin transfer of chemicals by in vitro studies using artificial, skin mimicing membranes and development of fast screening methods for chemicals in textiles. Another focus area is recycling of textiles and new materials for a sustainable development.
MISTRA: (2020 – 2023) SafeChem. Developing and implementing fast analytical methods to screen, quantify and monitor the content of hazardous chemical remains from textile production in textiles, recycled textile materials and waste water in the context of developing a sustainable, circular economy.
Formas: (2018 – 2021) Textiles - a forgotten source to daily chemical exposure, 2017-01532.
Development of target, suspected & non-target screening methods for textile related chemicals, with applications to textiles, transfer of chemicals from textile material to skin and the effect of washing of textile materials. Also development of methods for studying the textile to skin transfer of textile related chemicals.
SNV: (2018-2020) Screening of chemical textiles in wastewater.
Target, suspected & non-target screening of inlet and outlet wastewater plant effluents.
Research group members
- Conny Östman, Professor, PI
- Ulrika Nilsson, Professor, Co-PI
- Josefine Carlsson, PhD student
- Tim Åström, PhD student
- Ida Jallow, Diploma student
- Claudia Crescenzo, Erasmus exchange student, Salerno, Italy
Cooperations
- Anneli Kruve, Associate Professor
- Ioannis Sadiktsis, Researcher, PhD
- Jan Holmbäck, Lipidor AB
- Isabella Karlsson, Associate Professor, ACES
- Carlo Crescenzi, Salerno University, Italy.
- Stephen Wise, NIST, USA.
Specialties
- The Analytical Chain
- Development of analytical methods
- Gas Chromatography
- Liquid Chromatography
- Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS & LC/MS)
- Coupled ATD/GC/MS
- Coupled LC-GC and LC-GC-MS
- Non-target and suspect screening
- Target screening