Bernard Beckerman, PhD

Dr. Beckerman is the managing member of RETRA and has worked as a consulting scientist for over 20 years, providing services in exposure reconstruction, human health risk assessment, environmental epidemiology, (bio)statistical analysis, toxicology, and geospatial analysis. Over the course of his career, he has authored or co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and government reports, some of which have informed the development of the United States National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

He has conducted numerous product safety evaluations for both consumer and occupational exposures. In this role, he has assisted clients in evaluating potential chemical exposures to ensure compliance with a range of state and federal regulations. While his primary focus has been California’s Proposition 65, his expertise also includes product evaluations under regulatory frameworks administered by the FDA, CPSC, and various state agencies, supporting both product stewardship and litigation matters.

Dr. Beckerman has worked extensively on air pollution-related projects. These have included assessments of the Aliso Canyon natural gas disaster in Los Angeles County, oil and gas production near residential areas, and exposures resulting from a fire at a metal recycling facility in the Bay Area. He has also evaluated hazards from potential chemical spills at a chemical warehouse in Southern California and assessed impacts from fugitive dust emissions at an automobile recycling facility. Additionally, he served on a review panel for a community air quality and health surveillance program near an aluminum smelter.

He has provided technical support to litigation and insurance matters involving claims of occupational and environmental exposures, including PFAS, emissions from upstream oil and gas operations, methamphetamine residue, ethylene oxide, chlorinated solvents, wildfire smoke, and fugitive dust.

Other notable projects include a multi-year effort for the Central Valley Waterboard assessing hazards associated with the use of treated “produced water” from oil and gas operations for food crop irrigation. He has also conducted national-scale simulation studies to evaluate the effects of confounding and model assumptions on epidemiologic mortality findings. Additional work has included statistical and modeling analyses using cancer surveillance data to evaluate breast cancer rates among workers, identifying drivers of Medicaid expenditures, and modeling occupational exposures from a high-volume waste stream rupture in a chip manufacturing facility.

Principal Scientist