April 27, 2023 by Graham Merrington


Combined photos

Graham was invited to attend a Workshop on the Derivation and Implementation of Bioavailability-based Water Quality Guidelines for Metals in Freshwaters, in Sydney Australia, by CSIRO. The workshop objectives were to better understand the issues in using bioavailability models (MLRs) to derive freshwater zinc (and other metal) guidelines and to reach consensus on the best approach for implementation (adjustment of exposure versus adjustment of effects (GVs) to account for bioavailability) to recommend to Australian and New Zealand state and federal regulators. Graham gave presentations on the European approach to implementing bioavailability on the first day, and why bioavailability is important using a comparison with historic ‘hardness-based’ approaches, and a brief overview on global approaches to account for metal bioavailability in freshwaters on the second.

The meeting was well attended, the photograph here is from the first day and shows Water Quality Guideline experts from Australian and New Zealand at ANSTO, Lucas Heights.

Discussion on bioavailability model selection, research outcomes on model validation and testing for Australian and New Zealand freshwaters and options for regulatory implementation were discussed.