David Zaruk is the Risk-Monger. He has been an EU risk and science communications specialist since 2001, active in EU policy events from REACH to the Pesticides Directive, from Science in Society questions to the use of the Precautionary Principle. He was part of the team that set up GreenFacts to encourage a wider use of evidence-based decision-making in the EU on environmental health matters. He is an adjunct professor at VUB (Vesalius College) and Facultés Universitaires St-Louis where he lectures on Risk Communications, EU Lobbying, Corporate Communications and PR. He is a senior associate fellow at the Institute for European Studies (VUB) and works as a consultant at Risk Perception Management. In the past, he has been employed by Solvay, Cefic and Burson-Marsteller, retiring from “active work” in 2006.

He is also a graduate, like most of us, from Google University, and while he is tempted to pretend to be an expert on everything he searches on, he believes that there are scholars who have spent years working to become experts in their fields whose views merit more value than the collective.