Computational material flow analysis for thousands of chemicals of emerging concern in European waters.

Knowledge of exposure to a wide range of chemicals, and the spatio-temporal variability thereof, is urgently needed in the context of protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems. This paper discusses a computational material flow analysis to predict the occurrence of thousands of man-made organic chemicals on a European scale, based on a novel temporally and spatially resolved modelling framework. The goal was to increase understanding of pressures by emerging chemicals and to complement surface water monitoring data.

Prospects for finding Junge variability-lifetime relationships for micropollutants in the Danube river.

Persistence of chemical pollutants is difficult to measure in the field. Junge variability-lifetime relationships, correlating the relative standard deviation of measured concentrations with residence time, have been used to estimate persistence of air pollutants. Junge relationships for micropollutants in rivers could provide evidence that half-lives of compounds estimated from laboratory and field data are representative of half-lives in a specific system, location and time.

Exposure and ecotoxicological risk assessment of mixtures of top prescribed pharmaceuticals in Swedish freshwaters.

Surface water concentrations of 54 pharmaceuticals were predicted for seven major Swedish rivers and the Stockholm City area basins using the STREAM-EU model. These surface water concentrations were used to predict the ecotoxicological impact resulting from the exposure of aquatic organisms to this mixture of 54 pharmaceuticals. STREAM-EU model results indicated that <10 substances were present at median annual water concentrations greater than 10 ng/L with highest concentrations occurring mostly in the more densely populated area of the capital city, Stockholm.

Model-predicted occurrence of multiple pharmaceuticals in Swedish surface waters and their flushing to the Baltic Sea.

An exposure assessment for multiple pharmaceuticals in Swedish surface waters was made using the STREAM-EU model. Results indicate that Metformin (27 ton/y), Paracetamol (6.9 ton/y) and Ibuprofen (2.

Towards the review of the European Union Water Framework Directive: Recommendations for more efficient assessment and management of chemical contamination in European surface water resources.

Water is a vital resource for natural ecosystems and human life, and assuring a high quality of water and protecting it from chemical contamination is a major societal goal in the European Union. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) and its daughter directives are the major body of legislation for the protection and sustainable use of European freshwater resources. The practical implementation of the WFD with regard to chemical pollution has faced some challenges.

Evaluation of human pharmaceutical emissions and concentrations in Swedish river basins.

An emissions inventory for top consumed human pharmaceuticals in Sweden was done based on national consumption data, human metabolic rates and wastewater treatment removal rates. Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in surface waters in Swedish river basins were predicted using estimated emissions from the inventory and river discharges. Our findings indicate that the top ten emitted pharmaceuticals in our study set of 54 substances are all emitted in amounts above 0.

Europe-wide estuarine export and surface water concentrations of PFOS and PFOA.

The STREAM-EU model was used to predict the water concentrations, estuarine export and retention of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in the eleven most populated European river catchments to provide a European-wide perspective on the contamination by these substances. Emissions of PFOS and PFOA to those catchments were calculated based on population, wealth and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) coverage and efficiency using a previously published method and used as model input. Our estimated emissions showed the lowest values for the Thames catchment (PFOS: 0.

A large-scale model for simulating the fate & transport of organic contaminants in river basins.

We present STREAM-EU (Spatially and Temporally Resolved Exposure Assessment Model for EUropean basins), a novel dynamic mass balance model for predicting the environmental fate of organic contaminants in river basins. STREAM-EU goes beyond the current state-of-the-science in that it can simulate spatially and temporally-resolved contaminant concentrations in all relevant environmental media (surface water, groundwater, snow, soil and sediments) at the river basin scale. The model can currently be applied to multiple organic contaminants in any river basin in Europe, but the model framework is adaptable to any river basin in any continent.

Estimating emissions of PFOS and PFOA to the Danube River catchment and evaluating them using a catchment-scale chemical transport and fate model.

Novel approaches for estimating the emissions of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) to surface waters are explored. The Danube River catchment is used to investigate emissions contributing to riverine loads of PFOS and PFOA and to verify the accuracy of estimates using a catchment-scale dynamic fugacity-based chemical transport and fate model (STREAM-EU; Spatially and Temporally Resolved Exposure Assessment Model for European basins). Model accuracy evaluation performed by comparing STREAM-EU predicted concentrations and monitoring data for the Danube and its tributaries shows that the best estimates for PFOS and PFOA emissions in the Danube region are obtained by considering the combined contributions of human population, wealth (based on local gross domestic product (GDP)) and wastewater treatment.