| Abstract: | With the Water Framework Directive (WFD) the European Commission (EC) is requested to define environmental quality standards for pollutants to protect aquatic life in surface waters. Quality standards have to be derived by a scientific risk assessment and should not be exceeded. The recommended quality standards are mainly based on long term toxicological tests with algae, crustaceans and fish. The lowest effect concentration is divided by an assessment factor between 10 and 1000, which considers the data quality and quantity. In this work funded by the German Länder Working Party on Water (Länderarbeitsgemeinschaft Wasser – LAWA) environmental quality standards for 40 considered relevant substances were derived for aquatic ecosystems. The data sheets cover the identification of the compounds, their behaviour in the environment (physical‐chemical properties, biotic and abiotic degradation, sorption, bioaccumulation), information about mode of action, uses, analytical determination and available quality criteria. Ecotoxicological effect concentrations for bacteria, algae, protozoa, aquatic plants, crustaceans, fish, amphibians, insects and molluscs are listed. For 17 of the 40 hazardous substances investigated, quality objectives above 1 μg/L were derived. For 12 substances the values were between 0.1 μg/L and 1 μg/L and for 5 substances lower than 0.1 μg/L. Incomplete ecotoxicological data sets of the remaining compounds do not allow the derivation of quality standards. Especially for drugs further ecotoxicological test results are needed. |
