Title: Ozone and Plant Life: The Good and The Bad.
Biographical Sketch: Dr. Victor C. Runeckles obtained a first class honours B.Sc. in botany at Imperial College, London, and stayed on to complete a Ph.D. in plant biochemistry in 1954. He was a National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Department of biology, Queen's University, Kingston from 1954-1957, when he moved to Montreal to head a biochemistry group in the laboratories for several years when, in 1969, he left to become Head of the Department of Plant Science at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver.
He eventally "smartened up" and stepped away from administration in 1988 in order to "try to achieve something of more lasting benefit", through his research into the effects of air pollution on plants.
He was awarded a Nuffield Foundation Fellowship in 1978, which enabled him to spend a sabbatical leave in England, at Imperial College, and at the Universities of Lancaster and Nottingham.
He was a founding member of the Phytochemical Society of North America, in which he is now a Life Member. For many years he was Editor-in-Chief of the Society’s publication, “Recent Advances in Phytochemistry.”
He has authored over 100 publications, including chapters in several books dealing with the effects of air pollution on vegetation and crops. He is currently and Associate Editor of “Atmospheric Environment.” His research interests started with phytochemistry, but moved to air pollution effects in the late 50’s, with the identification of ozone as the cause of “weather-fleck” of tobacco growing in Southern Ontario. During the period 1957-61, he and Morris Katz were part of the team that established cause and effect. Most recently, he has been actively engaged in determining the magnitude of the “ozone problem” in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia.
He has served on numerous national and international review panels and committees. He chaired the annual reviews of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Crop Loss Assessment Network Program, that was set up to assess the economic magnitude of crop losses in the United States attributable to ambient ozone, and served on several review panels associated with the U.S. National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program. He serves on the Ecological Effects Committee of the International Society for Plant Pathology, and has held numerous consultancies with petroleum industry and public utilities in Canada and United States in connection with environmental impact assessments. Brochure