Jaroslav Slobodnik

• Dr.
• Director at Environmental Institute

Objectives: Illicit drug use presents a significant challenge to global health and public safety, requiring innovative and effective monitoring strategies. This study aimed to evaluate the current landscape of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for monitoring illicit drugs in Europe, focusing on collaboration, current practices, and barriers, whil...

This study investigated the concentration profiles and geographical variability of contaminants in house dust across Europe. A collaborative trial (CT) was organized by the NORMAN network using pooled dust and advanced chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques combined with suspect screening and non-target screening (NTS). Over 1200 anthrop...

Background Prioritisation of chemical pollutants is a major challenge for environmental managers and decision-makers alike, which is essential to help focus the limited resources available for monitoring and mitigation actions on the most relevant chemicals. This study extends the original NORMAN prioritisation scheme beyond target chemicals, prese...

Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) are widely used to control rodent populations, resulting in the serious secondary exposure of predators to these contaminants. In the United Kingdom (UK), professional use and purchase of SGARs were revised in the 2010s. Certain highly toxic SGARs have been authorized since then to be used outdoo...

Background: Prioritisation of chemical pollutants is a major challenge for environmental managers and decision-makers alike, which is essential to help focus the limited resources available for monitoring and mitigation actions on the most relevant chemicals. This study extends the original NORMAN prioritisation scheme beyond target chemicals, pres...

Toxicology has been an active research field for many decades, with academic, industrial and government involvement. Modern omics and computational approaches are changing the field, from merely disease-specific observational models into target-specific predictive models. Traditionally, toxicology has strong links with other fields such as biology,...

Increasing production and use of chemicals and awareness of their impact on ecosystems and humans has led to large interest for broadening the knowledge on the chemical status of the environment and human health by suspect and non-target screening (NTS). To facilitate effective implementation of NTS in scientific, commercial and governmental labora...

The production of this report was carried out through the HELCOM Project for the development of the Third Holistic Assessment of the Baltic Sea (HOLAS 3). The work builds on the previous assessment (HOLAS II) and methodologies, evaluations and assessments included in this report have been directly contributed to by the HELCOM BLUES project, the Bal...

Polar regions should be given greater consideration with respect to the monitoring, risk assessment, and management of potentially harmful chemicals, consistent with requirements of the precautionary principle. Protecting the vulnerable polar environments requires (i) raising political and public awareness and (ii) restricting and preventing global...

Trace elements are chemical contaminants spread in the environment by anthropogenic activities and threaten wildlife and human health. Many studies have investigated this contamination in apex raptors as sentinel birds. However, there is limited data for long-term biomonitoring of multiple trace elements in raptors. In the present study, we measure...

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) represent an important input of contaminants in the environment. Therefore, it is critical to continuously monitor the performance of WWTPs to take appropriate action and avoid an influx of contaminants in the environment. In this study, a battery of seven in vitro bioassays covering a selected spectrum of toxici...

Non-target screening (NTS) methods are rapidly gaining in popularity, empowering researchers to search for an ever-increasing number of chemicals. Given this possibility, communicating the confidence of identification in an automated, concise and unambiguous manner is becoming increasingly important. In this study, we compiled several pieces of evi...

The Dutch breeding population of the black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa limosa has declined substantially over recent decades; the role of contaminants is unknown. We analysed liver samples from 11 adult birds found dead on their breeding grounds in SW Friesland 2016-2020, six from extensive, herb-rich grasslands, five from intensive grasslands. We...

The occurrence of antibiotics in the environment could result in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which could result in a public health crisis. The occurrence of 676 antibiotics and the main transformation products (TPs) was investigated in the 48 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) from 11 countries (Germany, Romania, Serbia, Croa...

The chemical pollution crisis severely threatens human and environmental health globally. To tackle this challenge the establishment of an overarching international science–policy body has recently been suggested. We strongly support this initiative based on the awareness that humanity has already likely left the safe operating space within planeta...

Using monitoring data from apex predators for chemicals risk assessment can provide important information on bioaccumulating as well as biomagnifying chemicals in food webs. A survey among European institutions involved in chemical risk assessment on their experiences with apex predator data in chemical risk assessment revealed great interest in us...

A state-of-the-art wide-scope target screening of 2,362 chemicals and their transformation products (TPs) was performed in samples collected within the Joint Danube Survey 4 (JDS4) performed in 2019. The analysed contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) included three major categories: plant protection products (PPPs), industrial chemicals and pharm...

Environmental studies which aim to assess the ecological impact of chemical and other types of pollution should employ a complex weight-of-evidence approach with multiple lines of evidence (LoEs). This study focused on in situ genotoxicological methods such as the comet and micronucleus assays and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis as one...

Apex predators are good indicators of environmental pollution since they are relatively long-lived and their high trophic position and spatiotemporal exposure to chemicals provides insights into the persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) properties of chemicals. Although monitoring data from apex predators can considerably support chemicals’ m...

Background The NORMAN Association (https://www.norman-network.com/) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE; https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/) in 2015, following the NORMAN collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals that...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107476

High-quality and comprehensive exposure-related data are critical for different decision contexts, including environmental and human health monitoring, and chemicals risk assessment and management. However, exposure-related data are currently scattered, frequently of unclear quality and structure, not readily accessible, and stored in various—partl...

The chemical industry is the leading sector in the EU in terms of added value. However, contaminants pose a major threat and significant costs to the environment and human health. While EU legislation and international conventions aim to reduce this threat, regulators struggle to assess and manage chemical risks, given the vast number of substances...

Monitoring data from apex predators were key drivers in the development of early chemicals legislations due to the population declines of many species during the twentieth century, which was linked to certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Besides triggering the development of global treaties (e.g. the Stockholm Convention), chemical monitor...

A large number of apex predator samples are available in European research collections, environmental specimen banks and natural history museums that could be used in chemical monitoring and regulation. Apex predators bioaccumulate pollutants and integrate contaminant exposure over large spatial and temporal scales, thus providing key information f...

Human biomonitoring (HBM) is a crucial approach for exposure assessment, as emphasised in the European Commission’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). HBM can help to improve chemical policies in five major key areas: (1) assessing internal and aggregate exposure in different target populations; 2) assessing exposure to chemicals across l...

Background: The NORMAN Association (https://www.norman-network.com/) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE; https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/) in 2015, following the NORMAN collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals tha...

Micropollutants (MPs) in wastewater pose a growing concern for their potential adverse effects on the receiving aquatic environment, and some countries have started requiring that wastewater treatment plants remove them to a certain extent. Broad spectrum advanced treatment processes, such as ozonation, activated carbon or their combination, are ex...

The Black Sea is a semi-enclosed basin subject to major anthropogenic pressures, including marine litter and plastic pollution. Due to numerous large rivers draining into the basin and a population settled along the coast, the region could accumulate significant amounts of floating litter over time. Until now, only limited field data were available...

The Black Sea is an important ecosystem, which is affected by various anthropogenic pressures, such as shipping activities and wastewater inputs from large coastal cities. Significant loads of chemical pollutants are being continuously brought in by major European rivers. This study investigated the spatial distribution of chemicals in the Ukrainia...

Per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are under regulatory scrutiny since some of them are persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic. The occurrence of 4,777 PFAS was investigated in the Danube River Basin (DRB; 11 countries) using target and suspect screening. Target screening involved investigation of PFAS with 56 commercially available referenc...

There is an increasing need for developing a strategy to quantify the newly identified substances in environmental samples, where there are not always reference standards available. The semi-quantitative analysis can assist risk assessment of chemicals and their environmental fate. In this study, a rigorously tested and system-independent semi-quan...

The ability of bacteria to degrade organic pollutants influences their fate in the environment, impact on the other biota and accumulation in the food web. The aim of this study was to evaluate abundance and expression activity of the catabolic genes targeting widespread pollutants, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyl...

As stated by HELCOM Expert Group on Marine Mammals (EG MAMA; portal.helcom.fi, 2021), limited information is available on the occurrence, (eco)toxicity, and potential health effects of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in marine mammals. CECs are introduced into the environment by various anthropogenic activities andsome of these substances m...

Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) and gas chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) have revolutionized analytical chemistry among many other disciplines. These advanced instrumentations allow to theoretically capture the whole chemical universe that is contained in samples, giving unimaginable oppor...

Background: Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are considered as pollutants and are found in natural and anthropogenically impacted environments. Distribution of ARGs in marine environment poses a threat to human health turning the water body into a pool for the ARGs’ transmission. Objectives: A large-scale study of antibiotic resistance in microbi...

Toxicology has been an active research field for many decades, with academic, industrial and government involvement. Modern omics and computational approaches are changing the field, from merely disease-specific observational models into target-specific predictive models. Traditionally, toxicology has strong links with other fields such as biology,...

Background A scientific framework on exposure science will boost the multiuse of exposure knowledge across EU chemicals-related policies and improve risk assessment, risk management and communication across EU safety, security and sustainability domains. Objective To stimulate public and private actors to align and strengthen the cross-policy adop...

Data generated by the rapidly evolving human biomonitoring (HBM) programmes are providing invaluable opportunities to support and advance regulatory risk assessment and management of chemicals in occupational and environmental health domains. However, heterogeneity across studies, in terms of design, terminology, 2 Data value chain Data governance...

Treated wastewater irrigation (TWW) releases antibiotics and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) into the environment and might thus promote the dissemination of antibiotic resistance in groundwater (GW). We hypothesized that TWW irrigation increases ARG abundance in GW through two potential mechanisms: the contamination of GW with resistant bacteri...

Siverskyi Donets is the fourth longest river in Ukraine and its ecosystem is heavily affected by numerous agricultural and industrial activities. An impact of the on-going armed military conflicts in the Eastern Ukraine to the overall pollution by the chemicals has been studied. Considering the uncontrolled activities in the catchment due to the co...

There is an increasing need for comparable and harmonized retention times (tR) in liquid chromatography (LC) among different laboratories, to provide supplementary evidence for the identity of compounds in high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS)-based suspect and nontarget screening investigations. In this study, a rigorously tested, flexible, and...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of emerging substances that have proved to be persistent and highly bioaccumulative. They are broadly used in various applications and are known for their long-distance migration and toxicity. In this study, 65 recent specimens of a terrestrial apex predator (Common buzzard), freshwater and mar...

Mapping of hydrophobic organic compounds (HOCs) in surface seawater on an east-to-west transect of the South Atlantic Ocean (SAO) and across the Black Sea (BS) in 2016 was performed by a dynamic passive sampling device containing silicone-based passive samplers. In SAO as well as in BS the measurements confirmed freely dissolved concentrations of p...

The Black Sea is the largest semi-closed permanently anoxic basin on our planet with long-term stratification. The study aimed at describing the Black Sea microbial community taxonomic and functional composition within the range of depths spanning across oxic/anoxic interface, and to uncover the factors behind both their vertical and regional diffe...

This poster outlines the role that can be played by natural science collections for monitoring of environmental contaminants in biota. Citation: Movalli, P., Cicero, G., Ramello, G., Sbokos, G., Vlachopoulos, K., Dekker, R.W.R.J., Espín, S., García-Fernández, A.J., Gómez-Ramírez, P., Hosner, P.A., Islam, S., Koureas, D., Kristensen, J.B., van der M...

The power analysis carried out in this study demonstrates that sufficient power (>70%) can be achieved with relatively few pooled samples to detect small annual changes in average residue magnitude. This study demonstrates that, where possible, maintaining a higher number of samples per year increases the power to detect change. However, pooling...

The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was first reported in March 2020. Over the subsequent months, the potential for wastewater surveillance to contribute to COVID-19 mitigation programmes has been the focus of intense national and international research activities, gaining the attention of policy makers and the public. As a new application...

Microplastics are an emerging global environmental contaminant that are affecting multiple spheres. Despite their ubiquity in all spheres of life and ecology, little is known about the health effects of microplastics exposure to humans. This scoping review explores the existing evidence on the potential human health effects of microplastics and sub...

Articles reporting the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in seawater were screened in 76 selected publications. Most of the studies were conducted in Europe, studying Baltic, North, and Mediterranean seawaters. The reviewed articles reported data on 420 pharmaceuticals from 1952 occurrence data points; 49 of them being reported in 10 or more studies. T...

In this study the occurrence, morphology and identification of microplastics in Black Sea sediments collected at different depths (range 22 - 2131 m) were determined for the first time. The study explored the advantages and limitations of using a non-invasive method consisting of filtration of the supernatant from the mixture of sediment with satur...

In this study, we analyzed the impacts of different environmental conditions on aquatic worm communities along the Danube River, based on two longitudinal surveys, the Joint Danube Surveys 2 and 3 (JDS; 2007 and 2013). We identified the most important environmental factors (among analyzed groups) that shape worm communities: hydromorphlogical alter...

The Partnership for Chemicals Risk Assessment (PARC) is currently under development as a joint research and innovation programme to strengthen the scientific basis for chemical risk assessment in the EU. The plan is to bring chemical risk assessors and managers together with scientists to accelerate method development and the production of necessar...

The aim of the EU-funded LIFE Apex project is to foster and improve the systematic use of chemical monitoring data from apex predators and prey (AP&P) samples for regulatory purposes. In the context of chemicals’ management, monitoring data from appropriate biota samples could prove the presence of chemicals in the environment and support the selec...

The occurrence of chemical and biological contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) was investigated in treated wastewater intended for reuse in agriculture. An agarose hydrogel diffusion-based passive sampler was exposed to the outlet of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) located in Cyprus, which is equipped with membrane bioreactor (MBR). Passive...

The quality of the Dniester River Basin has been seriously impacted by the chemicals released by agriculture, industry, and wastewater discharges. To assess its current chemical pollution status, a transboundary monitoring campaign was conducted in May 2019. Thirteen surface water, 13 sediment, and three biota samples were collected and analyzed us...

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 temp...

EMPODAT database is a part of the NORMAN database system based on geo-referenced and biomonitoring and provides information on emerging environmental contaminants in various matrices such as air, water, soil, sewage, sludge, and biota. This database consists of data on newly emerging substances that are known to be present but not yet included in r...

Background: Microplastics are fast becoming a major global environmental contaminant. Little is known about the health effects of microplastic exposure to humans despite being omnipresent in all spheres of life and ecology. This scoping review explores the existing evidence of potential human health effects of microplastics and subsequent knowledge...

As the largest semi-closed marine ecosystem in the world, the Black Sea has been heavily affected by human activities for a long time. Describing the biodiversity of multi-trophic biota in pelagic zone of the Black Sea and identifying the dominant environmental factors are prerequisites for protecting the sustainability of ecosystems. However, up t...

This study was carried out to identify the relations between macroinvertebrate communities and river basin specific (RBS) pollutants in the Danube River. The investigation was performed at 68 sites along 2,500 km of the Danube. Forward selection (FS), canonical correspondence analyses (CCA), the Spearman correlation coefficient (SC) and BIO-ENV ana...

The correct affiliation of Sabrina Lo Brutto is shown in this paper.

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 chemicals in commerce, concerns for increasingly diverse chemical emissions, and lack of effective diagnosis and management approaches. In reply, thr...

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 toxic risk of complex mixtures present in the environment. Complementing component- and effect-based monitoring with wide-scope target, suspe...

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 prevailing complex contamination and multiple stressor exposures. For the protection of water resources under global change conditions, specifi...

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-points and covering different parts of the chemicals´ life cycle stages. Lack of- and fragmented information on chemicals (properties, use, emiss...

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, among them the presence of many thousands of chemicals. The diagnosis of the likelihood that these chemicals negatively affect the ecological st...

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 substances in a single sample. Recent progress in computational sciences has enabled archiving and processing of HR-MS ‘big data’ at the routin...

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 effectively. The approach merges all available evidence from co-exposure modelling, chemical monitoring, effect-based monitoring, and ecologica...

Citation: Movalli, P., Ramello, G., Sbokos, J., Dekker, R., Vrezec, A., Shore, R.F., García-Fernández, A.J., Wernham, C., Krone, O., Alygizakis, N., Aradis, A., Badry, A., Barbagli, F., Berry, P., Biesmeijer, K., Boano, G., Bond, A.L., Choresh, Y., Kristensen, J.B., Cincinelli, A., Danielsson, S., Dias, A., Dietz, R., Eens, M., Espín, S., Eulaers,...

Overwhelming evidence over many decades has shown that many organic compounds have been released in the environment due to anthropogenic activities. The term “chemicals of emerging concern (CEC)” has been established for chemicals, which are not subjected to marketing restrictions and regulatory monitoring programmes but are candidates for future r...

Non-target screening (NTS) including suspect screening with high resolution mass spectrometry has already shown its feasibility in detecting and identifying emerging contaminants, which subsequently triggered exposure mitigating measures. NTS has a large potential for tasks such as effective evaluation of regulations for safe marketing of substance...

Overwhelming evidence over many decades has shown that many organic compounds have been released in the environment due to anthropogenic activities. The term “chemicals of emerging concern (CEC)” has been established for chemicals, which are not subject to marketing restrictions and regulatory monitoring programmes but are candidates for future reg...

How can environmental monitoring data support the safe use of substances and products in Europe? The aim of the EU funded LIFE APEX programme (2018-2022) is to improve systematic use of chemical monitoring data from apex predators and prey for protecting human health and the environment. More specifically, LIFE APEX responds to needs of regulators...

Seven-day composite effluent samples from a German monitoring campaign including 33 conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) were analyzed for linear alkylbenzene sulfonates (LAS) and alkyl ethoxysulfates (AES) and were screened by wide-scope suspect screening for 1564 surfactants and their transformation products (TPs) by UHPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS....

Averaged 7-day composite effluent wastewater samples from twelve wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in nine countries () in the Danube River Basin were collected. WWTPs' selection was based on countries' dominant technology and a number of served population with the aim to get a representative holistic view of the pollution status. Samples were an...

A platform for archiving liquid chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) data was developed for the retrospective suspect screening of thousands of environmental pollutants with the ambition of becoming a European and possibly global standard. It was termed Digital Sample Freezing Platform (DSFP) and incorporates all the recent de...

Untargeted analysis of a composite house dust sample has been performed as part of a collaborative effort to evaluate the progress in the field of suspect and nontarget screening and build an extensive database of organic indoor environment contaminants. Twenty-one participants reported results that were curated by the organizers of the collaborati...

Abstract 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 SOLUTIONS suggests that this likelihood can be estimated with effect-based methods (EBMs) complemented by chemical screening and/or impa...