Richard Kingston, PharmD

Dr. Rick Kingston is Co-Founder, President, Regulatory and Scientific Affairs, and Senior Clinical Toxicologist for SafetyCall International LLC and Pet Poison Helpline.  Dr. Kingston’s professional and academic career spans over 40 years including previously serving as co-founder and Director of the Minnesota Regional Poison Control Center and serving as a full Professor in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy where he continues to serve as a Clinical Professor.  He also holds an Adjunct appointment at the Rank of Professor at the University of Mississippi College of Pharmacy and its National Center for Natural Product Research which is co-funded by the US FDA as a Center of Excellence.  He has published and presented extensively in the field of clinical toxicology and regulatory policy, and serves on numerous scientific panels, advisory boards and non-profit professional organization scientific committees advising on issues of product stewardship, science, and safety.  His professional expertise spans the areas of consumer product post-market surveillance, poisoning epidemiology, natural product toxicology, clinical toxicology and pharmacology, injury prevention, poison control, and product safety regulatory policy. He has been invited by numerous regulatory agencies (US EPA, FDA, CPSC and multiple divisions of Health Canada) to advise on establishing and implementing regulatory standards related to mandatory and voluntary adverse event reporting and use of incident data to assess product safety.  Included among the many honors he has received are the awards from the Household and Commercial Products Association which include two division Volunteer of the Year awards from the Pest Management division and the AirCare Division for product stewardship, and the Chairman’s Award for promotion and training related to product safety.  He also received the prestigious NutraChampion national award from NutraIngredients for his work in ensuring the safety of dietary supplements and other health related products and ingredients.  He continues to work with other SafetyCall colleagues in helping companies monitor the safe and effective use of their products.