User friendly BLM
The new Guidance for deriving Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) supports the use of a tiered compliance assessment regime for metals that incorporates both correction for natural background concentrations and bioavailability. However, the guidance does not provide practical tools to implement a bioavailability-based compliance regime. Moreover, current BLM/WHAM normalisations for Cu, Ni and Zn are time-consuming and not sufficiently user-friendly for regulatory use. To this end, a quick, user-friendly and unified chronic BLM normalisation tool based on full Biotic Ligand Model (BLM) calculations have been developed for several metals (i.e. Cu, Ni and Zn). The tools require the input of the following abiotic water parameters: DOC, pH and Hardness concentration. These user-friendly tools, when used as part of a tiered approach, provide water managers with an opportunity to efficiently account for metal bioavailability in a transparent way and deliver a robust metric of potential environmental risk.
A website has been developed that will act as a portal for all aspects of metal bioavailability and its implementation and includes an online version of the user-friendly tools
The Biomet tool has been developed jointly by ARCHE and WCA. Sponsors of the tool are NIPERA, IZA and ECI
In order to use the tool you must register at our Biometdedicated website and obtain a Login account in order to access the tool and all supporting information.
Keep track of our latest news
-
New Soil PNEC calculator is available!
A new updated version of the soil PNEC calculator is available for download on our website. Apart from a new layout, this new version now also includes data for Co and Mo. All calculations are now based on the data and methods selected for the EU REACH dossiers (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals; Regulation EC No 1907/2006) for Cu, Ni, Zn, Pb, Cd, Mo and Co, as available in August 2012."
-
From Soil screening values to Metal Clean-up values
Dr. Koen Oorts (ARCHE) is invited by the North American Metals Council (NAMC) to actively participate in a workshop on "Ecological Soil Levels-Next Steps in the Development of Metal Clean-up Values" scheduled for September 17-20, 2012 in Utah. The workshop's main goal is to provide regulators with the methods and processes developed over the last ten years to move from soil screening values to clean-up values.
-
SPERC tool for metals is updated!
The first version of the metal SPERCs was published in 2010 for the purpose of the 2010 REACH registration deadline and underwent a review process conducted by Lüskow et al. (2011) on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency of Germany (UBA). The second version of the metal SPERCs were improved based on the recommendations by Lüskow et al. (2011) and Tolls et al. (in press) and were further updated with new data for the purpose of the 2013 REACH registration deadline. This second version is currently undergoing a scientific review process but can already been find on this website.
-
Our QSARCHE model is released
Vertebrate testing under REACH is discouraged by promoting use of alternative non-testing approaches such as QSARs (Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships). Many QSARs are available, however, robust REACH compliant QSARs predicting chronic ecotoxicity to fish are largely lacking. ARCHE filled this data gap by the release of its QSARCHE fish toxicity model. Click to the right to read on.
Meet us at these upcoming events
-
4th Symposium on Biocidal Product Authorisation Vienna 23-24 May 2013
Symposium on authorisation/registration of biocidal products according to existing schemes(especially BPD) and the arising issues and interaction with the forthcoming Biocidal ProductRegulation (BPR)
-
65th International Symposium on crop protection- 21-05-2013 Ghent
This Symposium will be held at the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of the Ghent University, Coupure links 653, BE-9000 Ghent, Belgium.
