The NORMAN network's special view on prioritisation of biocides as emerging contaminants

Valeria Dulio (1) , Peter C. von Der Ohe , Fabrizio Botta (1) , I. Ipolyi , H. Ruedel , Jaroslav Slobodnik

1 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques

NORMAN promotes the use of innovative monitoring and assessment tools for identifying the substances of emerging concern most in need of future regulation. The network maintains various databases (e.g. EMPODAT) and has developed a prioritisation scheme specifically designed to deal with “problematic” substances for which knowledge gaps are identified. These tools have been significantly improved in recent years (expansion of EMPODAT database from 1 million to more than 6 million records; a new “ecotox“ module to allow systematic collection of ecotoxicity test data from online databases worldwide, plus existing regulatory EQS/PNEC values). The NORMAN list of “frequently discussed” emerging substances contains 862 compounds: among them, 253 are “new“ substances which have been added to the previous list from 2013, whereas 100 substances are now labelled as “former NORMAN” emerging substances. As regards biocides, the list contains 151 active substances of emerging concern that are still in use, under review or formerly used and 12 compounds (e.g., cybutryne, cypermetryne, dichlorvos, etc.) that are still listed for data collection but labelled as “former NORMAN” compounds. The NORMAN prioritisation scheme helps to identify some compounds which evidently need control / mitigation measures (e.g., deltamethrine, terbutryn, imidaclopride, carbendazim, triclosan). Moreover, it is possible to cite substances for which additional monitoring data would be needed,such as e.g., fenoxycarb and tolylfluanid with a potential risk of exceedance of the PNEC. Cyfluthrin and permethrin were identified as substances for which analytical performance should be improved (target: achieve LOQ < PNEC) and N,N-diethyltoluamide and propiconazole appear as substances already sufficiently monitored and for which no evidence of risk was identified. Biocides are active substances emitted into our environment which are definitely to be regarded as substances of emerging concern. EMPODAT confirms that biocides are still insufficiently covered in monitoring programmes: data are available for 70% of the compounds that are also used as plant protection products, but only 15% of the compounds used solely as biocides have monitoring data in the database. Access to the latest information on emerging pollutants, with an overview of benchmark values on their occurrence across Europe would certainly be of a major importance for risk assessors.

Domains: Environmental Sciences

Valeria Dulio, Peter C. von Der Ohe, Fabrizio Botta, I. Ipolyi, H. Ruedel, et al.. The NORMAN network's special view on prioritisation of biocides as emerging contaminants. 26. SETAC Europe annual meeting, May 2016, Nantes, France. ⟨ineris-01863838⟩