Department Environmental Chemistry

Current projects

Urban areas

Separate collection and treatment of urine has been developed as an approach for preventing eutrophication, producing a valuable fertilizer and promoting sanitation in areas where no sewer-based sanitation is available...
Treatment with powdered activated carbon (PAC) and ozonation are established methods for advanced wastewater treatment plants...
by Suspect and Non-Target Screening in WWTPs and their Abatement during Wastewater Treatment
A large number and variety of chemicals used in households, healthcare, industry or agriculture enter our wastewater treatment plants with the domestic and industrial wastewater....
Emissions from the galenic production (GalPro) of pharmaceuticals can lead to concentration peaks of active ingredients in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents...

Agriculture

Feasibility Study Trend Analysis and Spatial Transferability of Pesticide Monitoring Data
Surface water contamination by plant protection products in small catchment: How do they get here?
Comprehensive monitoring of organic trace substances in surface waters is time-consuming and costly. The NAWA SPEZ project delivers data and analyses on the status of water pollution.
Input of plant protection products into surface waters in rural landscapes: What is the relevance of hydraulic shortcuts ?
...is an inter- and trans-disciplinary research project, studying environmental, health and institutional dimensions of pesticide use in tropical settings

Analysis

Chemicals are released to the environment through a variety of pathways...
NTSuisse: Development of a National Platform for the Analysis of High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data
by Suspect and Non-Target Screening in WWTPs and their Abatement during Wastewater Treatment
Comprehensive, open access database of > 2000 secondary metabolites from cyanobacteria...
Identification and quantification of species in the vast and diverse universe of organic micropollutants is a daunting challenge for environmental sciences...
High resolution mass spectrometry in the field
«Extracellular enzymes drive element cycling and degrade pollutants and transform themselves in surface waters»...

Process studies

Chemical contamination of soils, sediments, and water through military activities in Switzerland...
Advancing bioaccumulation science for organic contaminants in aquatic systems: The impact of receptor binding, temperature, and uptake pathways...
Chemical pollution is a major threat to ecosystems and human health and current regulations seem insufficient to prevent widespread chemical contamination...
Chemicals are released to the environment through a variety of pathways...
New proxies for ecosystem metabolism
by Suspect and Non-Target Screening in WWTPs and their Abatement during Wastewater Treatment
Eine grosse Zahl und Vielfalt von Chemikalien gelangen mit häuslichem und industriellem Abwasser in unsere Kläranlagen...
Internal body concentrations are the driver of toxicological effects....
Iron-containing clay minerals exhibit unusual redox buffering capabilities
Reading biotransformation half-lives of agrochemicals across different compartments...
Ozonation is one of the treatments used in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to remove MPs, reducing their discharge to the aquatic environment...
«Analytical and environmental chemistry of toxins and bioactive metabolites from cyanobacteria»
Our research on fate of pharmaceuticals is motivated by investigating transformation pathways and kinetics to better understand the lifetime of such biologically active compounds in our freshwater Systems...

Modelling

Autonomous quantum chemical reaction network explorations enable the elucidation of oxidative water treatment chemistry...
Chemical pollution is a major threat to ecosystems and human health and current regulations seem insufficient to prevent widespread chemical contamination...
Understanding and predicting the fate of synthetic chemicals under different environmental conditions is essential to evaluate their potential risk for humans and ecosystems...
NTSuisse: Development of a National Platform for the Analysis of High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data
At the Rhine monitoring station, the Basel-Stadt Environment and Energy Office (AUE Basel-Stadt) is measuring water contamination with organic micropollutants on a daily basis…
Pesticides are major environmental pollutants. For this reason, the European Commission (EC) has imposed a stringent pesticide regulatory scheme...
Reading biotransformation half-lives of agrochemicals across different compartments...
Identification and quantification of species in the vast and diverse universe of organic micropollutants is a daunting challenge for environmental sciences...
The screening of aquatic systems for known and unknown polar and semi-polar organic micropollutants relies heavily on analytical chemistry, foremost high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) coupled to liquid chromatography (LC)....

Terminated projects

Urban areas

Im Fokus stehen Produktgruppen wie die Pflanzenschutzmittel, Biozide und Veterinärpharmaka.
Development of a difference analysis for LC-MS/MS data to identify polar transformation products and assessment of environmental relevance
SOLUTIONS for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management
Managing micropollutants in surface waters in a transboundary context: On the way to appropriate management Units
Interdisciplinary project on biological effects of urban micropollutants
Ozonation is one of the treatments used in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to remove MPs, reducing their discharge to the aquatic environment...

Agriculture

According to the Swiss constitution, the Swiss agriculture has to fulfill several, partially conflicting goals such as agricultural production on the one hand and ...

Analysis

Identification of transformation products and assessment of environmental relevance
SOLUTIONS for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management
Development of a difference analysis for LC-MS/MS data to identify polar transformation products and assessment of environmental relevance
The river Rhine and its tributaries are a source of drinking water for more than 20 million people. At the same time treated waste water from numerous industrial sites and from the 54 million people living in the catchment area ends up in the rivers...
Ozonation is increasingly integrated into wastewater treatment trains to eliminate organic micropollutants, known to induce adverse effects to aquatic organisms...
In order to obtain a more comprehensive picture of the contamination of Swiss groundwater with polar organic micropollutants...
Ozonation is one of the treatments used in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to remove MPs, reducing their discharge to the aquatic environment...

Process studies

Contaminant oxygenating can be associated unproductive O2 activation
The degradation of munition compounds can be assessed with CSIA
Previous studies monitoring micropollutant concentrations in aquatic invertebrates revealed tissue concentrations of many compounds to be substantially higher than predicted from models...
Nitroaromatic explosives persist in the subsurface in different phases and it is extremely challenging to assess biotic and mineral-catalyzed degradation...
In regulatory hazard and risk assessment chemical persistence is assessed through a tiered system of degradation studies.
Predicting environment-specific biotransformation of chemical contaminants
Identification of transformation products and assessment of environmental relevance
N-nitrosamines such as N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) are of public and regulatory concern because these potent carcinogens can be formed as unintented by-products during drinking and waste water disinfection/oxidation.
The extension of the CSIA approach to micropollutants is challenging for both analytical and conceptual reasons. In a collaborative SNF-Sinergia project, we aim at elucidating the fate of pesticides by multi-element isotope analysis on the field scale.
A contemporary view of rivers recognizes them as having multiple vertical and lateral flow paths serving as bidirectional links to the surrounding landscape...

Modelling

In regulatory hazard and risk assessment chemical persistence is assessed through a tiered system of degradation studies.
Predicting environment-specific biotransformation of chemical contaminants
Site-specific chemical and bioassay monitoring of micropollutants (MPs) are desirable, but the large number and diversity of MPs, and the cost and technical issues of measuring them, make the exposure assessment challenging
Biodegradation simulation tests are an essential element of environmental risk assessment in most chemical regulations.
Managing micropollutants in surface waters in a transboundary context: On the way to appropriate management Units