Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Background
Prioritisation of chemical pollutants is a major challenge for environmental managers and decision-makers alike, which is essential to help focus the limited resources available for monitoring and mitigation actions on the most relevant chemicals. This study extends the original NORMAN prioritisation scheme beyond target chemicals, presenting the integration of semi-quantitative data from retrospective suspect screening and expansion of existing exposure and risk indicators. The scheme utilises data retrieved automatically from the NORMAN Database System (NDS), including candidate substances for prioritisation, target and suspect screening data, ecotoxicological effect data, physico-chemical data and other properties. Two complementary workflows using target and suspect screening monitoring data are applied to first group the substances into six action categories and then rank the substances using exposure, hazard and risk indicators. The results from the 'target' and 'suspect screening' workflows can then be combined as multiple lines of evidence to support decision-making on regulatory and research actions.

Results
As a proof-of-concept, the new scheme was applied to a combined dataset of target and suspect screening data. To this end, > 65,000 substances on the NDS, of which 2579 substances supported by target wastewater monitoring data, were retrospectively screened in 84 effluent wastewater samples, totalling > 11 million data points. The final prioritisation results identified 677 substances as high priority for further actions, 7455 as medium priority and 326 with potentially lower priority for actions. Among the remaining substances, ca. 37,000 substances should be considered of medium priority with uncertainty, while it was not possible to conclude for 19,000 substances due to insufficient information from target monitoring and uncertainty in the identification from suspect screening. A high degree of agreement was observed between the categories assigned via target analysis and suspect screening-based prioritisation. Suspect screening was a valuable complementary approach to target analysis, helping to prioritise thousands of substances that are insufficiently investigated in current monitoring programmes.

Conclusions
This updated prioritisation workflow responds to the increasing use of suspect screening techniques. It can be adapted to different environmental compartments and can support regulatory obligations, including the identification of specific pollutants in river basins and the marine environments, as well as the confirmation of environmental occurrence levels predicted by modelling tools.

Graphical Abstract

AbstractThe Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC) is currently under development as a joint research and innovation programme to strengthen the scientific basis for chemical risk assessment in the EU. The plan is to bring chemical risk assessors and managers together with scientists to accelerate method development and the production of necessary data and knowledge, and to facilitate the transition to next-generation evidence-based risk assessment, a non-toxic environment and the European Green Deal. The NORMAN Network is an independent, well-established and competent network of more than 80 organisations in the field of emerging substances and has enormous potential to contribute to the implementation of the PARC partnership. NORMAN stands ready to provide expert advice to PARC, drawing on its long experience in the development, harmonisation and testing of advanced tools in relation to chemicals of emerging concern and in support of a European Early Warning System to unravel the risks of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and close the gap between research and innovation and regulatory processes. In this commentary we highlight the tools developed by NORMAN that we consider most relevant to supporting the PARC initiative: (i) joint data space and cutting-edge research tools for risk assessment of contaminants of emerging concern; (ii) collaborative European framework to improve data quality and comparability; (iii) advanced data analysis tools for a European early warning system and (iv) support to national and European chemical risk assessment thanks to harnessing, combining and sharing evidence and expertise on CECs. By combining the extensive knowledge and experience of the NORMAN network with the financial and policy-related strengths of the PARC initiative, a large step towards the goal of a non-toxic environment can be taken.