Topic Center for Environmental Pollutants

The Topic Center for Environmental Pollutants is managed by the Department of Environmental Science (ENVS) in close collaboration with the Department of Ecoscience (ECOS). The centre's primary tasks involve providing consultancy and reporting data related to the monitoring of environmental pollutants in surface waters. As such, the centre works across data centres focused on marine, freshwater, and hydrological point sources. The tasks are carried out by staff with diverse experience in environmental pollutants and environmental monitoring, drawing expertise from both ENVS and ECOS.

The following areas of expertise are covered by the centre:

The occurrence of pollutants in the environment, including environmental sources, sampling, NOVANA monitoring data, quality assurance, data extraction, and data processing.
The fate of pollutants in the environment, including persistence, distribution, bioaccumulation, and transport. This also covers transformation processes, process understanding, and modelling.
Ecotoxicology, including biological effects, uptake mechanisms, bioaccumulation, biomarkers, ecotoxicological mechanisms of action, effects of chemical mixtures, and bioavailability.
Risk assessment and quality standards, including exposure models and other risk assessment tools, estimation of bioaccumulation and bioconcentration factors, assessment criteria, and contributions to environmental quality standards.
Analytical chemistry, including analysis methods, quality of analyses, development and improvement of analytical methods, new analytical technologies (e.g., non-target and suspect screening), and chemical indicators.

Background

In recent years, there has been increasing attention on pollutants in the environment. In 2021, the Danish Ministry of Environment released its strategy for environmental pollutants, and within the monitoring framework, a dedicated EP (environmental pollutants) programme was established under NOVANA. Consequently, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency required more consolidated reporting and advisory services concerning environmental pollutants within the monitoring programme, and in 2024, the Topic Centre for Environmental Pollutants was established. One of the centre’s primary tasks is to publish an annual NOVANA report on environmental pollutants, which spans the four surface water monitoring sub-programmes (marine, streams, lakes, and point sources).

Data is collected under the national monitoring programme for water and nature (NOVANA), and the basis for the monitoring is defined in the programme description.