Sediment monitoring in NAWA SPEZ 2018

From 2014 to 2018, the Ecotox Centre has developed a method for monitoring sediment quality in Swiss waters together with Eawag and FOEN. The proposed method consists of sampling and sample pretreatment of sediments, analysis of 20 priority pollutants and comparison of measured concentrations with ecotoxicologically derived environmental quality criteria (EQSsed). There are still some questions elated to the grain size (<63 µm or alternatively <2 mm) of the investigated sediment fraction. Therefore, the Ecotox Centre assesses at 18 sites of the project NAWA SPEZ 2018 assesses how the analysis of the prioritised pollutants is influenced by the particle size fraction and how this information can be integrated into risk assessment. In addition, the centre examines the sediment samples with various bioassays to measure their ecotoxicity. This will provide important information on the bioavailability of pollutants.