SETAC Spotlight: Pesticides and their Metabolites in European Surface and Groundwater: Evaluating Regulations and Approaches to Environmental Monitoring

Regulation designed to protect the environment and consumers is constantly evolving. This is driven by the need to consider new scientific knowledge as well as the desire for increased harmonization between different regulations. While the latter has the potential to simplify some aspects of regulatory requirements it also potentially leads to additional complexity, data requirements, and issues of interpretation.

One such area is environmental quality assessment utilizing environmental monitoring data. Interpretation of such data should be based on scientifically robust environmental quality standards to avoid incorrect conclusions and sub-optimal risk management decisions. However, defining substance specific quality standards or water treatment removal efficiencies requires additional effort as does ensuring they are applied in the correct situation, like only at drinking water abstraction locations which requires knowledge of where these are. This may lead to simplifying assumptions being made by under-resourced regulatory agencies seeking to follow the guidance. While overly precautionary assessments based on simplification may be expedient and ultimately protective of the environment, they may have additional consequences like the withdrawal of economically important products with favorable risk-benefit profiles or the costs of continued monitoring for low(er) risk substances.

This poster seeks to produce a synthesis of these interacting EU Directives assessing environmental monitoring data and the quality standards or regulatory thresholds they require to do so. In addition, the data required and guidance available to define these endpoints, the monitoring data and summaries to which they should be applied, and their intended use will be considered. Gaps in available data and guidance to ensure consistent compliance assessment under these regulations will be highlighted. Recent developments like the proposed harmonized monitoring guidelines (SANTE 2020/12830) as well as revision of the Drinking Water Directive which, amongst other objectives, refocuses considerations of compliance to raw water alongside that of the tap of the consumer requiring the collection of data that identifies abstraction points as well as their source catchments will be factored in. It will also consider upcoming developments such as the proposed revision of the Water Framework, Groundwater and Environmental Quality Standards Directives.

If you would like to discuss any of the topics raised in this article, feel free to contact us.

The poster is available for free download.

You can find all of the other posters that CEA presented at SETAC Dublin here. You can also find all of our publications from previous conferences and links to journal articles we have authored on our library page.

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