Headshot of Clifton Dassuncao

Clifton Dassuncao

Environmental Epidemiologist

Often the most vulnerable communities are disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards. In my work, I strive to offer solutions that help address environmental injustices and improve public health for all communities.


Dr. Clifton Dassuncao is an epidemiologist and board-certified toxicologist whose career has focused on understanding and mitigating human exposures to harmful contaminants in the environment. He has a strong background in research methods and biostatistics developed during his doctoral and post-doctoral training, where he built models to better understand the fate, transport, bioaccumulation, and human exposures of emerging contaminants.

At ERG, Clifton supports federal, state, and not-for-profit clients in conducting exposure assessments, risk evaluations, toxicological reviews, and epidemiological studies covering a wide range of emerging concerns including PFAS, cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms, and COVID-19. Clifton has become a leader in wastewater-based epidemiology, an emerging public health tool used to determine exposure to chemicals or pathogens in a community. He supports a diverse set of projects that monitor for drugs and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in wastewater.

Clifton holds an Sc.D. and M.S. in environmental health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a B.S. in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology. In his spare time, he enjoys throwing pottery and playing tennis.