Hervé Macarie is a research officer at the Research Institute for Development (IRD ex-ORSTOM). In this position since October 1994, he has developed research on the technological and the microbiological aspects (taxonomy & ecology) of the anaerobic treatment of industrial wastewater and he has both an experience at lab and full scale (up to reactors of 20,000 m³).
One of his main interests has been for the anaerobic degradation of xenobiotic compounds such as terephthalic acid and pentachlorophenol and the development of synchronous anaerobic/aerobic systems to achieve the full mineralization of this last compound. Since 2008, his research has been almost entirely focused on the microbial degradation of chlordecone, an organochlorine insecticide classified as POP that was once used against the banana black weevils and that is now responsible, 20 years after the ban of its utilization, of a health, environmental, economic and social crisis in the French West Indies islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Along his career, he has been successively in position in Canada (postdoctoral fellow, BRI, NRC, 1992-1994), Mexico (visiting Professor, UAM-Iztapalapa, 1995-2000), continental France (Aix Marseille University, 2001-2010) and Martinique (CAEC, 2011-2014).
Since 2015 he is back to Aix Marseille University and IMBE (Mediterranean Institute for Marine and Continental Biodiversity and Ecology) where he will pursue his research on the theoretical and experimental aspects of chlordecone degradation with the objective to understand the factors limiting its natural attenuation and the possibility to manipulate them in order to propose a bioremediation process to decontaminate the polluted soils.