Modern approaches to evaluate water quality

Currently there is a new approach to a biological evaluation of surface water which is also fixed in the new European Guideline for Water Quality. However, the parameters defined by the regulation such as survey of the makrozoobenthos are retrospective and cannot mostly be correlated with a specific (chemical) pollution causing the effects. Moreover, those parameters do not deliver insight either in the concerned biological mechanisms or in toxicological kinetics and dynamics. That is why the principle committee "Water Ingredients and Water Quality" is dealing with new approaches to evaluate water quality and potential links between chemical and biological monitoring strategies. In particular, the principle committee considers assays detecting biological effects on the molecular and cellular level as a chance to complete the significance of the methods commonly used.