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Policy Briefs of the EU Project Solutions

Policy briefs of the EU project SOLUTIONS

This is an article collection published in Environmental Sciences Europe.

Insufficient water quality, due to the contamination with complex mixtures of environmental pollutants posing toxic risks to ecosystems and human health, is one of the major challenges on the way to achieve the goals of the European Water Framework Directive and of other major policy goals in Europe such as achieving a non-toxic environment.

After five years of collaborative research in the EU project “SOLUTIONS for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management (Grant agreement no. 603437)” this collection of policy briefs compiles major findings and recommendations by this large scale research project for policy makers and other stakeholders from regulation, monitoring and management of water pollution but is also designed to inspire solutions-oriented science. The collected articles suggest applicable approaches to monitor, model, assess and abate risks by complex mixtures of environmental contaminants in European water resources and support these suggestions with recent scientific findings from SOLUTIONS and beyond. Requirements for a more coherent water and chemical regulation are identified and recommendations for a future European research agenda are given.

The collection of policy briefs as a whole aims to summarize the output of extensive research in the project published in more than 200 original scientific articles and make it useful for decision making and water quality protection.  All submissions were invited and underwent rigorous peer review. Accepted articles were published in Environmental Sciences Europe in this collection.


Published articles in this collection:

  1. 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...

    Authors: Thomas Backhaus, Werner Brack, Paul J. Van den Brink, Björn Deutschmann, Henner Hollert, Leo Posthuma, Helmut Segner, Thomas-Benjamin Seiler, Ivana Teodorovic and Andreas Focks
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:98
  2. Present evaluations of chemical pollution in European surface and groundwater bodies focus on problem description and chemical classification of water quality. Surprisingly, relatively low attention has been p...

    Authors: Leo Posthuma, Thomas Backhaus, Juliane Hollender, Dirk Bunke, Werner Brack, Christin Müller, Jos van Gils, Henner Hollert, John Munthe and Annemarie van Wezel
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:73
  3. The European Union Water Framework Directives aims at achieving good ecological status in member states’ water bodies. Insufficient ecological status could be the result of different interacting stressors, amo...

    Authors: Jos van Gils, Leo Posthuma, Ian T. Cousins, Claudia Lindim, Dick de Zwart, Dirk Bunke, Stela Kutsarova, Christin Müller, John Munthe, Jaroslav Slobodnik and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:72
  4. The ecological status of European surface waters may be affected by multiple stressors including exposure to chemical mixtures. Currently, two different approaches are used separately to inform water quality m...

    Authors: Leo Posthuma, Werner Brack, Jos van Gils, Andreas Focks, Christin Müller, Dick de Zwart and Sebastian Birk
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:71
  5. The present monitoring and assessment of water quality problems fails to characterize the likelihood that complex mixtures of chemicals affect water quality. The European collaborative project SOLUTIONS sugges...

    Authors: Leo Posthuma, Rolf Altenburger, Thomas Backhaus, Andreas Kortenkamp, Christin Müller, Andreas Focks, Dick de Zwart and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:70
  6. Evidence is mounting that chemicals can produce joint toxicity even when combined at levels that singly do not pose risks. Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) defined for single pollutants under the Water Fr...

    Authors: Andreas Kortenkamp, Michael Faust, Thomas Backhaus, Rolf Altenburger, Martin Scholze, Christin Müller, Sibylle Ermler, Leo Posthuma and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:69
  7. Chemical pollution of water bodies is a complex problem around the globe. When described by the extremes of the range of problem definitions, water bodies can be chemically polluted by a single compound that i...

    Authors: Kees J. M. Kramer, Frank Sleeuwaert, Guy Engelen, Christin Müller, Werner Brack and Leo Posthuma
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:68
  8. Chemical pollution of surface waters is a societal concern around the globe. Key problems in current water quality protection, assessment and management are the narrow focus on a small fraction of the chemical...

    Authors: Leo Posthuma, John Munthe, Jos van Gils, Rolf Altenburger, Christin Müller, Jaroslav Slobodnik and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:67
  9. Current prioritisation procedures under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) do not account for risks from chemical mixtures. SOLUTIONS proposes a multiple-lines-of-evidence approach to tackle the problem ef...

    Authors: Michael Faust, Thomas Backhaus, Rolf Altenburger, Valeria Dulio, Jos van Gils, Antoni Ginebreda, Andreas Kortenkamp, John Munthe, Leo Posthuma, Jaroslav Slobodnik, Knut Erik Tollefsen, Annemarie van Wezel and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:66
  10. Robust techniques based on liquid (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) enable sensitive screening, identification, and (semi)quantification of thousands of su...

    Authors: Jaroslav Slobodnik, Juliane Hollender, Tobias Schulze, Emma L. Schymanski and Werner Brack
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:65
  11. An analysis of existing regulatory frameworks for chemicals reveals a fragmented situation with a number of regulatory frameworks designed for specific groups of chemicals; for protection of different end-poin...

    Authors: John Munthe, Jenny Lexén, Tina Skårman, Leo Posthuma, Werner Brack, Rolf Altenburger, Eva Brorström-Lundén, Dirk Bunke, Michael Faust, Magnus Rahmberg, Frank Sleeuwaert, Jaroslav Slobodnik, Jos van Gils and Annemarie van Wezel
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:64
  12. 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 p...

    Authors: Werner Brack, Selim Ait-Aissa, Thomas Backhaus, Sebastian Birk, Damià Barceló, Rob Burgess, Ian Cousins, Valeria Dulio, Beate I. Escher, Andreas Focks, Jos van Gils, Antoni Ginebreda, Daniel Hering, L. Mark Hewitt, Klára Hilscherová, Juliane Hollender…
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:63
  13. Currently, chemical monitoring based on priority substances fails to consider the majority of known environmental micropollutants not to mention the unexpected and unknown chemicals that may contribute to the ...

    Authors: Werner Brack, Juliane Hollender, Miren López de Alda, Christin Müller, Tobias Schulze, Emma Schymanski, Jaroslav Slobodnik and Martin Krauss
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:62
  14. Environmental water quality monitoring aims to provide the data required for safeguarding the environment against adverse biological effects from multiple chemical contamination arising from anthropogenic diff...

    Authors: Rolf Altenburger, Werner Brack, Robert M. Burgess, Wibke Busch, Beate I. Escher, Andreas Focks, L. Mark Hewitt, Bo N. Jacobsen, Miren López de Alda, Selim Ait-Aissa, Thomas Backhaus, Antoni Ginebreda, Klára Hilscherová, Juliane Hollender, Henner Hollert, Peta A. Neale…
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:12
  15. The present monitoring and assessment of the chemical status of water bodies fail to characterize the likelihood that complex mixtures of chemicals affect water quality. The European Collaborative Project SOLU...

    Authors: Werner Brack, Selim Ait Aissa, Thomas Backhaus, Valeria Dulio, Beate I. Escher, Michael Faust, Klara Hilscherova, Juliane Hollender, Henner Hollert, Christin Müller, John Munthe, Leo Posthuma, Thomas-Benjamin Seiler, Jaroslav Slobodnik, Ivana Teodorovic, Andrew J. Tindall…
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2019 31:10