Following intensive discussions we have established a number of selection criteria to determine whether a bioassay is applicable for the assessment of the chemical water quality. A range of projects have already focused on the - largely overlapping – assay characteristics and selection criteria for bioassays to be used in environmental monitoring (Leusch et al. 2012; OECD 2012; Agency et al. 2012).
In vitro bioassays are techniques that promise great steps forward in drinking water security. The technique is based on engineered cells that show a reaction if the sample they are exposed to contains toxins. A wide range of in vitro bioassays has been applied for water quality assessment for:
Surface water, groundwater, the sea or other brackish sources of drinking water production are generally exposed to a complex mixture of pollutants associated with household, industrial, and agricultural waste. Current environmental monitoring of these water bodies is based on a comparison between concentrations of chemically target analyzed priority pollutants (n=33+8) and their environmental threshold values.