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- Altenburger, R., et al.
(författare)
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Future water quality monitoring - Adapting tools to deal with mixtures of pollutants in water resource management
- 2015
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697. ; 512, s. 540-551
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Environmental quality monitoring of water resources is challenged with providing the basis for safeguarding the environment against adverse biological effects of anthropogenic chemical contamination from diffuse and point sources. While current regulatory efforts focus on monitoring and assessing a few legacy chemicals, many more anthropogenic chemicals can be detected simultaneously in our aquatic resources. However, exposure to chemical mixtures does not necessarily translate into adverse biological effects nor clearly shows whether mitigation measures are needed. Thus, the question which mixtures are present and which have associated combined effects becomes central for defining adequate monitoring and assessment strategies. Here we describe the vision of the international, EU-funded project SOLUTIONS, where three routes are explored to link the occurrence of chemical mixtures at specific sites to the assessment of adverse biological combination effects. First of all, multi-residue target and non-target screening techniques covering a broader range of anticipated chemicals co-occurring in the environment are being developed. By improving sensitivity and detection limits for known bioactive compounds of concern, new analytical chemistry data for multiple components can be obtained and used to characterise priority mixtures. This information on chemical occurrence will be used to predict mixture toxicity and to derive combined effect estimates suitable for advancing environmental quality standards. Secondly, bioanalytical tools will be explored to provide aggregate bioactivity measures integrating all components that produce common (adverse) outcomes even for mixtures of varying compositions. The ambition is to provide comprehensive arrays of effect-based tools and trait-based field observations that link multiple chemical exposures to various environmental protection goals more directly and to provide improved in situ observations for impact assessment of mixtures. Thirdly, effect-directed analysis (EDA) will be applied to identify major drivers of mixture toxicity. Refinements of EDA include the use of statistical approaches with monitoring information for guidance of experimental EDA studies. These three approaches will be explored using case studies at the Danube and Rhine river basins as well as rivers of the Iberian Peninsula. The synthesis of findings will be organised to provide guidance for future solution-oriented environmental monitoring and explore more systematic ways to assess mixture exposures and combination effects in future water quality monitoring. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 2. |
- Van den Brink, P. J., et al.
(författare)
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Toward sustainable environmental quality: Priority research questions for Europe
- 2018
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Ingår i: Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. - : Wiley. - 0730-7268 .- 1552-8618. ; 37:9, s. 2281-2295
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals have been established to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals will require a healthy and productive environment. An understanding of the impacts of chemicals which can negatively impact environmental health is therefore essential to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, current research on and regulation of chemicals in the environment tend to take a simplistic view and do not account for the complexity of the real world, which inhibits the way we manage chemicals. There is therefore an urgent need for a step change in the way we study and communicate the impacts and control of chemicals in the natural environment. To do this requires the major research questions to be identified so that resources are focused on questions that really matter. We present the findings of a horizon-scanning exercise to identify research priorities of the European environmental science community around chemicals in the environment. Using the key questions approach, we identified 22 questions of priority. These questions covered overarching questions about which chemicals we should be most concerned about and where, impacts of global megatrends, protection goals, and sustainability of chemicals; the development and parameterization of assessment and management frameworks; and mechanisms to maximize the impact of the research. The research questions identified provide a first-step in the path forward for the research, regulatory, and business communities to better assess and manage chemicals in the natural environment. Environ Toxicol Chem 2018;37:2281-2295. (c) 2018 The Authors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of SETAC.
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| 3. |
- Backhaus, Thomas, 1967, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing the ecological impact of chemical pollution on aquatic ecosystems requires the systematic exploration and evaluation of four lines of evidence
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Sciences Europe. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2190-4707 .- 2190-4715. ; 31:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of the European Water Framework Directive is to ensure good ecological status for all European surface waters. However, although current monitoring strategies aim to identify the presence and magnitude of ecological impacts, they provide little information on the causes of an ecosystem impairment. In fact, approaches to establish causal links between chemical pollution and impacts on the ecological status of exposed aquatic systems are largely lacking or poorly described and established. This is, however, crucial for developing and implementing appropriately targeted water management strategies. In order to identify the role of chemical pollution on the ecological status of an aquatic ecosystem, we suggest to systematically combine four lines of evidence (LOEs) that provide complementary evidence on the presence and potential ecological impact of complex chemical pollution: (1) component-based methods that allow a predictive mixture risk modeling; (2) effect-based methods; (3) in situ tests; (4) field-derived species inventories. These LOEs differ systematically in their specificity for chemical pollution, data demands, resources required and ecological relevance. They complement each other and, in their combination, allow to assess the contribution of chemical pollution pressure to impacts on ecological structure and function. Data from all LOEs are not always available and the information they provide is not necessarily consistent. We therefore propose a systematic, robust and transparent approach to combine the information available for a given study, in order to ensure that consensual conclusions are drawn from a given dataset. This allows to identify critical data gaps and needs for future testing and/or options for targeted and efficient water management.
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| 4. |
- Brack, W., et al.
(författare)
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Strengthen the European collaborative environmental research to meet European policy goals for achieving a sustainable, non-toxic environment
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Sciences Europe. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2190-4707 .- 2190-4715. ; 31:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To meet the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals and the European Union (EU) strategy for a non-toxic environment, water resources and ecosystems management require cost-efficient solutions for prevailing complex contamination and multiple stressor exposures. For the protection of water resources under global change conditions, specific research needs for prediction, monitoring, assessment and abatement of multiple stressors emerge with respect to maintaining human needs, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Collaborative European research seems an ideal instrument to mobilize the required transdisciplinary scientific support and tackle the large-scale dimension and develop options required for implementation of European policies. Calls for research on minimizing society's chemical footprints in the water-food-energy-security nexus are required. European research should be complemented with targeted national scientific funding to address specific transformation pathways and support the evaluation, demonstration and implementation of novel approaches on regional scales. The foreseeable pressure developments due to demographic, economic and climate changes require solution-oriented thinking, focusing on the assessment of sustainable abatement options and transformation pathways rather than on status evaluation. Stakeholder involvement is a key success factor in collaborative projects as it allows capturing added value, to address other levels of complexity, and find smarter solutions by synthesizing scientific evidence, integrating governance issues, and addressing transition pathways. This increases the chances of closing the value chain by implementing novel solutions. For the water quality topic, the interacting European collaborative projects SOLUTIONS, MARS and GLOBAQUA and the NORMAN network provide best practice examples for successful applied collaborative research including multi-stakeholder involvement. They provided innovative conceptual, modelling and instrumental options for future monitoring and management of chemical mixtures and multiple stressors in European water resources. Advancement of EU water framework directive-related policies has therefore become an option. Bt Aachen Biol, Aachen, Germany.
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