The County Administrative Board (CAB) has established a collaboration with two local universities which has led to the development of two new water sampling and analysis methods as part of the regional monitoring plan developed in the framework of BIGDATA 4RIVERS project.
During Phase 2 CAB has been busy implementing its Action plan. The main achievement of CAB has been to improve the regional screening program for environmental toxins by identifying new substances and methods to be tested during their annual monitoring work. They have just finished taking the last water samples in Motala ström and Stångån. The samples will be analysed by their University collaborators using two new methods inspired by best practices of BIGDATA 4RIVERS.
Suspect screening analyses will identify a broader range of pollutants than the CAB usual methods and a biological toxicity analysis will determine the toxicity of total water samples on different organisms. The results will help CAB determine the most problematic substances in Östergötland, identify new sources of pollutants, and improve CAB’s ecological status classification under the Water Framework Directive.
