Internal Exposure and Effects

In order to exert a toxic effect on an aquatic organism, the toxicant has to reach the site of toxic action within the organism first. The internal concentration is a better characterisation of the biologically effective dose than for example aqueous concentrations and has several conceptual and practical advantages for the quantification of toxic effects.

Current Projects

• Improving the definition of water quality criteria: linking organism recovery times to mechanism of action and acute-to-chronic ratios [...]
  
• Toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic models in aquatic ecotoxicology for a mechanistic link between bioconcentration and effect [...]
• Mechanistic effect models for ecological risk assessment of chemicals [...]
• Alternatives to animal testing - CellSens [...]
• Metal-induced oxidative stress [...]
• Lead bioavailability and effects to periphyton [...]
• Metabolomics to assess oxidative stress in C reinhardtii [...]
• Glucocorticoid-like effluent activity [...]
• Causes for the estrogenicity of plankton from Lake Thun [...]

Past Projects

• Integration of internal metabolites in effect modelling of insecticides in Daphnia magna [...]
• Interactions of toxic and essential trace elements with periphyton in natural waters [...]
• Phytochelatins and thiol peptides in freshwater algae in response to metal exposure [...]
• Impact of colloidal organic matter on toxic metal bioavailability in urban water cycle [...]