Its not happening often that ecotoxicologists are asked by a municipality to investigate their sewage waters. The City of Stolberg together with Wasserverband Eifel-Rur (WVER) did, and we agreed to give 10 samples from their sewage water system a thorough ecotoxicological look, including influents and effluents from the waste water treatment plant Stolberg-Steinfurt.
This small but very interesting project will be covered by the master's thesis of candidate Sarah Johann. We will apply a range of different bioassays to reveal any possible hazardous potential.
Stolberg is a city near Aachen and an industrial hotspot of the region. While they have extensive data on heavy metal concentrations from continuous monitoring, so far no in-depth investigation of organic contamination has been done. Our bioassays are very well suited and sensitive enough to detect such substances through their biological activity.
Any positive results we will gain do not necessarily indicate a problem at all. Concentrations traceable using bioassays are often well below any environmentally or even toxicologically relevant level. Also, we do not expect any severe findings. This is a completely unbiased study, driven by scientific curiosity.
The City of Stolberg and the WVER are just very strict regarding environmental and human safety. They do so much for quality assurance when it comes to their waste waters, they now also want to cover this aspect. For us the project is a fantastic opportunity to get access to well-defined, specific waste water samples from different, very interesting spots, to better understand distribution of contaminants along the sewage water flow, and to prove bioassays as valuable tools for waste water monitoring.
No comments:
Post a Comment