Monitoring of harmful substances in freshwater fish

Because of the increasing attention for micropollutants, the Flemish pollutant monitoring network, which was stopped in 2008 due to financial reasons, is being restarted. This monitoring network provided information on the status and trends of harmful substances in canals, rivers and lakes. As a result, appropriate policy measures were taken for a number of substances, such as the standardisation of PCBs, the banning of lindane, the control of brominated flame retardants, ....

Many of the monitored substances are strongly lipophilic, and therefore difficult to measure in water. It is therefore obvious that these substances are monitored in fish.

With the monitoring network, we want to perform trend analyses again, so that structured and recurrent measurements can be performed in aquatic biota, with maximum utilisation of efforts from other existing monitoring networks. We focus on PFOS but also on other pollutants of current relevance.

The monitoring network will also visualise the sources of PFOS and other pollutants in hot spots through targeted monitoring in aquatic biota.