Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) or Limit Values are widely used to protect the environment and human health from substances released by human activity. They usually relate to doses or concentrations in the environment for specific chemicals, below which unacceptable effects are expected not to occur. Some standards are legally enforceable numerical limits, such as Quality Standards for Priority Substances under the Water Framework Directive. Others are not mandatory, but are contained in guidelines and codes of practice, as is the case for many soil and waste related limit values.
We have helped government and commercial clients to derive and implement defensible EQS for metals, industrial chemicals, pesticides, biocides, medicines, endocrine active substances and nanoparticles. We have used assessment factor, species sensitivity distribution, time-to-event and fully probabilistic statistical approaches to derive EQS for substances in surface waters (freshwater, saltwater and drinking water), sediments, soils and wastes. This includes providing advice to the European Commission on how EQS can be developed for biota and how non-testing approaches such as Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships can be used in a robust EQS derivation framework.
