Deriving a bioavailability-based zinc environmental quality standard for France
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Deriving a bioavailability-based zinc environmental quality standard for France Graham Merrington 1 & Adam Peters 1 & Iain Wilson 1 & Chris Cooper 2,3 & Frank Van Assche 2,3 & Adam Ryan 2,3 Received: 25 June 2020 / Accepted: 23 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract National Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) for zinc used for the assessment of ecological status in freshwaters have been shown to vary by over two orders of magnitude across 25 European countries. Such variability is unlikely to reflect consistent ecological protection or environmental relevance. Recent European technical guidance on EQS derivation gives an opportunity to derive protective metrics for zinc that are relevant to national water chemistry conditions. To derive a zinc EQS relevant to national water chemistry conditions and account for bioavailability, the new technical guidance requires high-quality spatial and temporal monitoring data. These data must be of water samples with concurrent measures of pH, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and calcium, the parameters that most influence zinc bioavailability in freshwaters. A national bioavailability-based zinc EQS for France has been derived from Biotic Ligand Model calculations undertaken for freshwaters samples from 4645 sites (22,000 samples with concurrent measures of pH, DOC, calcium) in 96 regions. An EQS of 11.3 μg Zn L−1 was derived based on sensitive waters from the Bretagne region typically of circumneutral pH and relatively low DOC and low dissolved calcium. The least sensitive waters to zinc exposures in France are found in the Hauts-De-France, higher pH values than those in Bretagne, similar dissolved organic carbon and higher dissolved calcium. An indicative assessment of compliance showed that across France, 2% of the sites would exceed this bioavailability-based EQS. Keywords Zinc . Bioavailability . Freshwaters . Monitoring data . France
Introduction Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) are used across Europe as legally binding numerical values for the assessment of water quality, derive effluent discharge limits and set environmental targets for programmes of works, i.e. restorative and improvement actions. Some of these EQS are derived centrally by the European Commission and applied across all European Countries; these are called priority substances Responsible Editor: Stuart Simpson Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10603-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Graham Merrington [email protected] 1
wca environment Ltd, Faringdon Oxfordshire UK
2
International Zinc Association, Brussels Belgium
3
International Zinc Association, Durham NC USA
(Annex X of the Water Framework Directive, 2000/60/EC). However, for some substances, including zinc, EQSs are derived by the national regulatory authorities and applied only in that respective country; these EQS are called specific pollutan
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