Towards spatially smart abatement of human pharmaceuticals in surface waters: Defining impact of sewage treatment plants on susceptible functions

Prospective mixture risk assessment and management prioritizations for river catchments with diverse land uses

“…Such actions would imply a change in emission of suites of chemicals, with those suites including the set of chemicals of high priority within the land use. Abating chemical risks can utilize a suite of options, not solely a chemo‐centric approach (National Research Council 2009; Munthe et al 2017); and it was, for example, shown earlier that an analysis of spatial associations between emission points and water bodies with sensitive functions (drinking water production, protected nature) can be a basis to reduce impacts via smart spatial arrangements (Coppens et al 2015) and that clever strategies may be utilized to reduce adverse effects of chemicals and other water quality parameters (Malaj et al 2014; Barclay et al 2016). From upstream to downstream, land‐use influences on smaller tributaries may be characterized by mixtures with greater exposures and simpler composition, with a “land‐use dilution” effect in the downstream direction (López‐Serna et al 2012).…”

Eco-epidemiology of aquatic ecosystems: Separating chemicals from multiple stressors

“…Regarding 'software', the case studies substantiate how the regulatory link between chemical and water assessments could look like (as present in REACH via Article 2.4 and the Water Framework Directive in its concept of Good Chemical Quality), and they cover the goals of a non-toxic environment and good ecological status simultaneously. Regarding 'mindware', a solutionfocused orientation used next to causal analysis supports finding sensible but as yet unexpected abatement options (Brack et al, 2015;Zijp et al, 2016), which has (amongst others) already resulted in an analysis towards safe spatial planning of chemical emission sources vis a vis sensitive functions (Coppens et al, 2015). While we acknowledge the major improvements that have been gained, are gained, and will be gained by continued application of existing chemical-and water policies, we wholeheartedly support the concluding remark of the risk study of Malaj et al (2014) based on our independently collected impact-based results: "[…] more effort is necessary to integrate and advance these regulations toward the reduction of toxic pollution.…”

Decision support for water quality management of contaminants of emerging concern

“…This was due to issues concerning the definition of the user group, the appropriate level of analysis and the expertise to be included (Junier and Mostert, 2014). A new and improved version was released in 2013, which has not been evaluated yet, but was used to study mitigation measures for pharmaceuticals (Coppens et al, 2015). With regards to the SOCOPSE DSS, no evaluation of the success was found, however it has been used within the project for five case studies (www.socopse.se ).…”