Many environmental policy decisions are based on what is known about the occurrence and distribution of chemical substances in the environment.We derive environmental quality objectives and for clients from regulatory bodies and industry we investigate trends of substance concentrations in environmental media (trend monitoring) or whether environmental quality standards are exceeded (surveillance monitoring).
On behalf of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) we maintain the German Federal Environmental Specimen Bank which is a central component of the ecological environmental observation program.
By order of the authorities, we use results from our own monitoring studies and data from the literature to identify critical substance properties such as bioaccumulation, biomagnification and long-range transport. Furthermore we develop and implement monitoring programs for industry partners and offer to apply these in monitoring studies.
Further to a substance-related monitoring we develop methods for effects-related analyses of environmental samples and evaluate the environmental quality by means of chemical, ecotoxicological and ecological parameters.