ECHO - Rapid identification of the relevance of new trace substances for water bodies in North Rhine-Westphalia

Current events consistently bring compounds or groups of substances into discussion for which no pollution information is available for the aquatic environment in North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond.

The ECHO program was established in order to be able to make short-term relevance statements, e.g. on the impact on the drinking water supply. ECHO pursues the goal of evaluating new substances with possible water relevance “on demand”.

ECHONews provides a first relevance statement for this individual compound/substance group immediately after measurement results are available. In each case, the program involves rapid method development and the implementation of a measurement program adapted to the problem using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) after high-performance liquid chromatographic separation or gas chromatography coupled with mass-selective detector.

In recent years, the concept been applied to several compounds or groups of compounds.

ECHO-News provides initial information immediately after measurement results are available.

In case of water relevance based on this assessment, detailed results and systematic evaluation are published in ECHO substance reports.

In the future, further compounds and substance groups will be investigated and reported if their relevance is to be evaluated.