Laboratory

Council Regulation (EU) 2017/997 establishes the methods for hazardous property HP 14 ‘Ecotoxic. The Regulation establishes the criteria for attributing the "ecotoxic" hazard property to waste through the application of the "conventional method", according to which the ecotoxicity is established from a chemical point of view, through the sum of the concentrations of substances classified as "ecotoxic", according to Regulation 2008/1272/EC (CLP regulation).

This document describes the outcomes of a collaborative trial on ecotoxicological measurements in which laboratories belonging to public institutions (ISPRA, ARPA/APPA, Universities and other Research Institutes) and private subjects participated. This study led to the validation of a specific method for freshwater environments for conducting the solid-phase bioassay using the bacterium Aliivibrio fischeri.

With the study of the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen it is possible to quantify the contribution to the total organic substance deriving either from the natural transformation of the biotic component or from anthropic sources such as, for example, urban and/or industrial waste. Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of such investigations in the identification and evaluation of contributions to organic matter deriving from multiple sources, in fact the stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen show an isotopic composition characteristic of the source from which they originate.

The aim of this study is to share and harmonize different laboratory procedures for mercury speciation to arrive at homogeneous evaluation criteria for environmental management of sediments and soil.