An expanded conceptual framework for solution-focused management of chemical pollution in European waters

BackgroundThis paper describes a conceptual framework for solutions-focused management of chemical contaminants built on novel and systematic approaches for identifying, quantifying and reducing risks of these substances.MethodsThe conceptual framework was developed in interaction with stakeholders representing relevant authorities and organisations responsible for managing environmental quality of water bodies. Stakeholder needs were compiled via a survey and dialogue. The content of the conceptual framework was thereafter developed with inputs from relevant scientific disciplines.ResultsThe conceptual framework consists of four access points: Chemicals, Environment, Abatement and Society, representing different aspects and approaches to engaging in the issue of chemical contamination of surface waters. It widens the scope for assessment and management of chemicals in comparison to a traditional (mostly) perchemical risk assessment approaches by including abatement- and societal approaches as optional solutions. The solution-focused approach implies an identification of abatement- and policy options upfront in the risk assessment process. The conceptual framework was designed for use in current and future chemical pollution assessments for the aquatic environment, including the specific challenges encountered in prioritising individual chemicals and mixtures, and is applicable for the development of approaches for safe chemical management in a broader sense. The four access points of the conceptual framework are interlinked by four key topics representing the main scientific challenges that need to be addressed, i.e.: identifying and prioritising hazardous chemicals at different scales; selecting relevant and efficient abatement options; providing regulatory support for chemicals management; predicting and prioritising future chemical risks. The conceptual framework aligns current challenges in the safe production and use of chemicals. The current state of knowledge and implementation of these challenges is described.ConclusionsThe use of the conceptual framework, and addressing the challenges, is intended to support: (1) forwarding sustainable use of chemicals, (2) identification of pollutants of priority concern for cost-effective management, (3) the selection of optimal abatement options and (4) the development and use of optimised legal and policy instruments.

[1]  Beate I. Escher,et al.  Recent advances in environmental risk assessment of transformation products. , 2011, Environmental science & technology.

[2]  Ken Geiser.  Chemicals without Harm: Policies for a Sustainable World , 2015 .

[3]  Li Li,et al.  Tracking chemicals in products around the world: introduction of a dynamic substance flow analysis model and application to PCBs. , 2016, Environment international.

[4]  Martin Krauss,et al.  Multicriteria approach to select polyaromatic river mutagen candidates. , 2015, Environmental science & technology.

[5]  I. Cousins,et al.  Europe-wide estuarine export and surface water concentrations of PFOS and PFOA. , 2016, Water research.

[6]  T. Backhaus,et al.  Simplifying complexity: Mixture toxicity assessment in the last 20 years , 2013, Environmental toxicology and chemistry.

[7]  Anne Hollander,et al.  SimpleBox 4.0: Improving the model while keeping it simple…. , 2016, Chemosphere.

[8]  Michael Neumann,et al.  Mind the Gap: Persistent and Mobile Organic Compounds-Water Contaminants That Slip Through. , 2016, Environmental science & technology.

[9]  Leo Posthuma,et al.  Definition and use of Solution-focused Sustainability Assessment: A novel approach to generate, explore and decide on sustainable solutions for wicked problems. , 2016, Environment international.

[10]  R. Schwarzenbach,et al.  The Challenge of Micropollutants in Aquatic Systems , 2006, Science.

[11]  D. Barceló,et al.  Occurrence of drugs of abuse in surface water from four Spanish river basins: Spatial and temporal variations and environmental risk assessment. , 2016, Journal of hazardous materials.

[12]  Martin Krauss,et al.  Assessment of a novel device for onsite integrative large-volume solid phase extraction of water samples to enable a comprehensive chemical and effect-based analysis. , 2017, The Science of the total environment.

[13]  S. Linder,et al.  Integrated assessment of risk and sustainability in the context of regulatory decision making. , 2014, Environmental science & technology.

[14]  Dick de Zwart,et al.  Ecological Effects of Pesticide Use in The Netherlands: Modeled and Observed Effects in the Field Ditch , 2005, Integrated environmental assessment and management.

[15]  Tobias Schulze,et al.  Effect-directed analysis supporting monitoring of aquatic environments--An in-depth overview. , 2016, The Science of the total environment.

[16]  Emma L. Schymanski,et al.  MetFrag relaunched: incorporating strategies beyond in silico fragmentation , 2016, Journal of Cheminformatics.

[17]  A. Focks,et al.  SOLUTIONS for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management , 2014 .

[18]  T. Backhaus.  Medicines, shaken and stirred: a critical review on the ecotoxicology of pharmaceutical mixtures , 2014, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[19]  D. Chapman,et al.  Developments in water quality monitoring and management in large river catchments using the Danube River as an example , 2016 .

[20]  A. Focks,et al.  Relative influence of chemical and non-chemical stressors on invertebrate communities: a case study in the Danube River. , 2016, The Science of the total environment.

[21]  D. Barceló,et al.  Drugs of abuse and benzodiazepines in the Madrid Region (Central Spain): seasonal variation in river waters, occurrence in tap water and potential environmental and human risk. , 2014, Environment international.

[22]  Diana H. Wall,et al.  Distributional (In)Congruence of Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning , 2012 .

[23]  D. Mackay,et al.  Finding fugacity feasible , 1979 .

[24]  I. Cousins,et al.  A large-scale model for simulating the fate & transport of organic contaminants in river basins. , 2016, Chemosphere.

[25]  Dick de Zwart,et al.  Eco-epidemiology of aquatic ecosystems: Separating chemicals from multiple stressors. , 2016, The Science of the total environment.

[26]  M. Hauschild,et al.  Chemical footprint method for improved communication of freshwater ecotoxicity impacts in the context of ecological limits. , 2014, Environmental science & technology.

[27]  Mark A J Huijbregts,et al.  Estimating the impact of high-production-volume chemicals on remote ecosystems by toxic pressure calculation. , 2006, Environmental science & technology.

[28]  Annemarie P van Wezel,et al.  Data-driven prioritization of chemicals for various water types using suspect screening LC-HRMS. , 2016, Water research.

[29]  Ann M Richard,et al.  Linking high resolution mass spectrometry data with exposure and toxicity forecasts to advance high-throughput environmental monitoring. , 2016, Environment international.

[30]  M Vighi,et al.  Ecological vulnerability analysis: a river basin case study. , 2010, The Science of the total environment.

[31]  A. Hoekstra,et al.  The water footprint of humanity , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[32]  Annemarie P van Wezel,et al.  Towards spatially smart abatement of human pharmaceuticals in surface waters: Defining impact of sewage treatment plants on susceptible functions. , 2015, Water research.

[33]  I. Cousins,et al.  Estimating emissions of PFOS and PFOA to the Danube River catchment and evaluating them using a catchment-scale chemical transport and fate model. , 2015, Environmental pollution.

[34]  B. Vrana,et al.  Calibration of a passive sampler based on stir bar sorptive extraction for the monitoring of hydrophobic organic pollutants in water. , 2016, Talanta.

[35]  Martin Krauss,et al.  Linking in Vitro Effects and Detected Organic Micropollutants in Surface Water Using Mixture-Toxicity Modeling. , 2015, Environmental science & technology.

[36]  Thomas Backhaus,et al.  Predictive environmental risk assessment of chemical mixtures: a conceptual framework. , 2012, Environmental science & technology.

[37]  W. Brack,et al.  Longitudinal profile of the genotoxic potential of the River Danube on erythrocytes of wild common bleak (Alburnus alburnus) assessed using the comet and micronucleus assay. , 2016, The Science of the total environment.

[38]  M. Krauss.  Chapter 15 - High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry in the Effect-Directed Analysis of Water Resources , 2016 .

[39]  Leo Posthuma,et al.  Definition and applications of a versatile chemical pollution footprint methodology. , 2014, Environmental science & technology.

[40]  W. Brack,et al.  Impact of untreated wastewater on a major European river evaluated with a combination of in vitro bioassays and chemical analysis. , 2017, Environmental pollution.

[41]  Martin Krauss,et al.  Optimization of LC-Orbitrap-HRMS acquisition and MZmine 2 data processing for nontarget screening of environmental samples using design of experiments , 2016, Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

[42]  D. Barceló,et al.  Degradation of the cytostatic etoposide in chlorinated water by liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole-Orbitrap mass spectrometry: identification and quantification of by-products in real water samples. , 2015, The Science of the total environment.

[43]  Rolf Altenburger,et al.  Micropollutants in European rivers: A mode of action survey to support the development of effect‐based tools for water monitoring , 2016, Environmental toxicology and chemistry.

[44]  F. Chapin,et al.  A safe operating space for humanity , 2009, Nature.

[45]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet , 2015, Science.

[46]  A Ginebreda,et al.  Prioritization of chemicals in the aquatic environment based on risk assessment: analytical, modeling and regulatory perspective. , 2012, The Science of the total environment.

[47]  Dick de Zwart,et al.  Ecological Effects of Pesticide Use in The Netherlands: Modeled and Observed Effects in the Field Ditch , 2005 .

[48]  Jonathan I Levy,et al.  Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment , 2010, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[49]  David M. Reif,et al.  High-throughput models for exposure-based chemical prioritization in the ExpoCast project. , 2013, Environmental science & technology.

[50]  Thomas Letzel,et al.  Non-target screening with high-resolution mass spectrometry: critical review using a collaborative trial on water analysis , 2015, Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

[51]  X. Sanchez‐Vila,et al.  Assessing and forecasting the impacts of global change on Mediterranean rivers. The SCARCE Consolider project on Iberian basins , 2012, Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

[52]  A. Finkel,et al.  'Solution-Focused Risk Assessment' - A Proposal for the Fusion of Environmental Analysis and Action , 2010 .

[53]  Sobek Anna,et al.  The dilemma in prioritizing chemicals for environmental analysis: known versus unknown hazards. , 2016, Environmental science. Processes & impacts.

[54]  Helmut Segner,et al.  Future water quality monitoring--adapting tools to deal with mixtures of pollutants in water resource management. , 2015, The Science of the total environment.

[55]  Dick de Zwart,et al.  Diagnosis of Ecosystem Impairment in a Multiple-Stress Context—How to Formulate Effective River Basin Management Plans , 2009, Integrated environmental assessment and management.

[56]  M. Hauschild,et al.  Beyond safe operating space: finding chemical footprinting feasible. , 2014, Environmental science & technology.

[57]  W. Brack.  Effect-directed analysis: a promising tool for the identification of organic toxicants in complex mixtures? , 2003, Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry.

[58]  M. Grote,et al.  Organic chemicals jeopardize the health of freshwater ecosystems on the continental scale , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[59]  M. Vighi,et al.  Ecological vulnerability in risk assessment--a review and perspectives. , 2010, The Science of the total environment.

[60]  Helmut Segner,et al.  The SOLUTIONS project: challenges and responses for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management. , 2015, The Science of the total environment.