I am an environmental chemist and toxicologist specializing in pollutants, their environmental fate, and impacts on ecosystems and human health. I integrate advanced analytical techniques, concepts from environmental chemistry, and mechanism-based modelling to understand contaminant behavior and effects. My thesis was awarded ‘bene meritum’ and nominated best of the year. Since, I produced ~50 scientific publications as output.
Keywords
Environmental chemistry, toxicology, legacy contaminants, contaminants of emerging concern, food chains, endocrine disruption, breakdown of chemicals
Research interests
My interests are the environmental fate, behavior, and toxicity of legacy and emerging pollutants, using modelling and mechanistic approaches to assess their impacts on ecosystems and human health. My research shapes strategies for environmental management and risk mitigation.
I led and contributed to international projects with diverse stakeholders, including academia, companies, government agencies, and NGOs. My work spans emerging and persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and microplastics, using an array of experimental data and computational tools to assess risks and inform policy makers.
My research involves contaminants in ecosystems, invertebrates and mammals, to improve assessment and reduce toxicological risks. I partner with researchers, labs and monitoring organizations in many countries, leveraging multidisciplinary expertise to tackle complex environmental challenges. I bridge research and policy for better environmental and human health.
I was involved in pan-European projects ‘iPiE’ (2015-19), ‘CER-CEC’ (2019-22) and ‘Sullied Sediments’ (2018-19) on emerging and persistent organic contaminants in water ecosystems, like polycyclic organic hydrocarbons (‘Concawe’), pharmaceuticals (‘Ecetoc’), micro- and nanoplastics (‘Nanonext’) and PFAS (‘AntiOx17’).
Currently I work on a major Horizon Europe project 'TerraChem' on contaminants in terrestrial food chains - focusing on exposure in wildlife and trophic transfer. Ongoing research includes endocrine disrupting pollutants and collaborations in Indonesia and the Philippines. I’m always eager to explore new collaborations and innovative solutions to environmental issues.
Teaching
I regularly supervise Dutch and international BSc, Msc and PhD students with backgrounds in biology, ecology and chemistry in internships on the fate and behavior of anthropogenic pollutants in aquatic and terrestrial environments.
Apart from student supervision I taught and developed material for several courses like ‘human and environmental risk assessment’, ‘environmental and ecological modelling’, and environmental toxicology and chemistry’. I am also passionate about mentoring and science communication.
Keypublications
- Nolte TM, Movalli P et al. 2025. Global Database of Metal Contaminants in selected Terrestrial Apex Predators, in prep.
- Nolte TM. 2024. Calculating Toxic Pressure for Mixtures of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals using the Golden Ratio. Heliyon. 11;10(14):e34501.
- Nolte TM, et al. 2023. Nanoparticles in Bodily Tissues: Predicting their Equilibrium Distributions. Environmental Science: Nano. Environ. Sci.: Nano, 10, 424-439
- Nolte TM, et al. 2022. Robust Calculus for Biodegradability in Wastewater generalized across Thousands of Chemicals and Conditions. Environmental Chemistry 20 (6), 249-267
- Nolte TM, et al. 2022. Stoichiometric Ratios for Biotics and Xenobiotics capture effective metabolic Coupling to re(de)fine Biodegradation. Water Research. 217, 118333
- Wang J, Nolte TM, et al. 2021. Towards a systematic Method for assessing the Impact of chemical Pollution on Ecosystem Services of Water Systems. J. Env. Man. 281(12):111873
- Nolte TM, et al. 2020. Bioconcentration of Organotin Cations during Molting Inhibits Heterocypris incongruens Growth. Environ. Sci. Technol., 54, 22, 14288–14301
- Nolte TM, et al. 2020. Thermochemical unification of Molecular Descriptors to predict Radical Hydrogen abstraction with low computational Cost. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 22, 23215-23225
- Nolte TM, et al. 2016. The toxicity of Plastic Nanoparticles to Green Algae as influenced by Surface modification, medium Hardness and Cellular adsorption. Aquatic Toxicology 183:11-20