Department Environmental Toxicology

Cinnamon, cardamom, orange, sweet cookies – can you smell it? Yes, Christmas is just around the corner!

The MLtox project unites machine learning and ecotoxicology.

Congratulations to Sarah Könemann for receiving the SETAC GLB award for the best PhD Thesis!

The guidelines of the WHO list only four substances produced by cyanobacteria. This is a small fraction of all the metabolites that can have ecotoxicological effects.

A small delegation of the Environmental Toxicology Department attended the 12th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences at Niagara Falls, Canada at the end of August.

This can indirectly affect the survival of fish populations and may be one of the reasons for the fish decline we are currently observing in Switzerland.

It was a great and a much welcomed idea by ECHA to organize the discussion platform on alternatives to animal testing for human and environmental health assessment from May 31 - June 1st, 2023,  making sure that representatives of all stakeholder groups were involved.

Utox was well-represented by 11 PhD students, postdocs, and group leaders at SETAC Europe in Dublin!

The aquatic research institute Eawag has published its latest annual report and looks back on the year 2022. Water is at the heart of the most important environmental issues.

On the 14th of April 2023, the 15th IBP PhD Congress under the motto Unlocking the Secrets of Elements was held at Eawag in Dübendorf. At this annual event, PhD students from the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics (IBP) at ETH Zurich have the opportunity to present their research results with a poster or a talk.

This week the Easter Bunny visited the Department of Environmental Toxicology.

Dr. Marissa Kosnik has joined Utox as group leader for systems biology. Her group will use computational toxicology to study the biological effects of chemicals within and among species in freshwater ecosystems, taking into account inter-individual variability.

On 9th February, Sven Mosimann successfully passed his aptitude colloquium at ETH Zurich, which makes him a definitely admitted PhD student.

After a 3-year hiatus, Utox finally resurrected its cherished tradition of the winter excursion, spending two days at Flumserberg to do some winter sports, hiking, and celebrating the team spirit over shared fondue.

After passing the closed exam in November, Sarah Könemann successfully defended her PhD on the “Mechanistic Understanding of Neurobehavioral Effects of Insecticides on the Larvae of Zebrafish (Danio rerio) ” in a public defense on 9.12.2022.

At this year’s Meeting of the Swiss Group for Mass Spectrometry (SGMS), Utox’ offspring Agafia Groh received the “Best Drawing” award for her impressions of the attended event.

Work is currently underway in Montreal at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) to negotiate a framework agreement to preserve biodiversity. In addition to pesticides, nutrients and plastic waste, certain other chemicals ought to be restricted in their production and use, or replaced by less problematic substances, according to a recommendation by a group of scientists, including an environmental toxicologist from Eawag.

Together with the Canton of St. Gallen, Eawag has been investigating the impact of the expansion of the wastewater treatment plant at Flawil to include a stage for the removal of micropollutants on water quality in the River Glatt. Initial results now show a very positive picture.

Scientists from Eawag, along with researchers from the former Eawag spin-off aQuatox-Solutions and the National Institute of Biology in Slovenia, have won almost 800,000 Swiss francs in the second phase of a contest run by the British Centre for the Replacement of Animals in Research.

The Microplastics 2022 conference took place in Ascona, Switzerland, where Dr. William Dudefoi presented his research on the toxicity of tire tread particles to fish using Rainbow trout cell lines.

The Utox delegation disseminated their recent research on fish cells as New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), serum-free cell culture media development, and machine learning at EUSAAT 2022 Congress.

Dr. Barbara Jozef was awarded with 3R Young Scientist Grant from EPAA. Congratulations, Barbara!

We celebrate recognition of the work of two of our Utox team members.

The smallest of all plastic particles have remained largely unexplored until now, because they could not be detected in the environment. Now researchers at Eawag show: Nanoplastics stick to slimy biofilms, which can for example be found on stones in streams or rivers. When freshwater snails feed on the slime, the nanoplastics are taken up.

Kristin Schirmer during her recent voyage to Canada, once again as ambassador of fish cell lines as alternatives to tests with fish for chemical screening and environmental risk assessment.

As part of a new national research programme that aims to replace animal experiments in research, the National Science Foundation is supporting a project at Eawag. This opens up new possibilities for determining the toxicity of chemical substances based solely on tests with cultured cells and computer models. Animal experiments could thus be replaced.

At this year's SETAC Europe meeting in Copenhagen, Sarah Könemann was awarded the Rifcon Early Career Scientist Award for her publication titled “Sub-Lethal Peak Exposure to Insecticides Triggers Olfaction-Mediated Avoidance in Zebrafish Larvae”.

Frank (Zhao Rui) Zhang receives the ETH medal for his master thesis "Quantifying Proliferation of RTgill-W1 Cell Line Under Serum Free Conditions: A Novel 96-Well Plate Format Assay". The medal is awarded annually for outstanding master's and doctoral theses at ETH Zurich.

Ozonation is an established treatment process to remove micropollutants from wastewater. However, since unstable toxic reaction products can be formed in the process, biological post-treatment is necessary. Results from the Ecotox Centre and Eawag show how well different post-treatment methods reduce ecotoxicological effects. The combination of ozonation and activated carbon proved to be the most effective.

Eawag researchers are using computer algorithms to predict the toxicity of chemicals to fish. Machine learning can help set priorities for experiments and, in the longer term, enable a tremendous reduction of animal testing.

Barbara Jozef, a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Environmental Toxicology, took part in the joint monthly webinar "Serum-free: How and Why?" organized by the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT) and the European Society of Toxicology In Vitro (ESTIV).

Louis Carles, postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Environmental Toxicology, won the award for the best live presentation during the webinar “EcotoxicoMic for Young Researchers”.

With around 200 pictures and texts, the new Water Timeline takes you through 200 years of the eventful history of Swiss water protection. It aims to show how shifts towards more sustainable management of natural resources can be shaped. 

Jenny Maner, PhD student in the Department Environmental Toxicology, has been awarded two prizes for the presentation of her project at recent scientific conferences.

Researchers Christoph Vorburger and Florian Altermatt talk about the importance and state of aquatic biodiversity in Switzerland and Eawag’s commitment to conserving natural biodiversity.

Microplastics, owing to their chemical properties, can carry micropollutants into a fish’s digestive system where they are subsequently released through the action of its gastric and intestinal fluids. Scientists of EPFL and Eawag, working in association with other research institutes, have studied this process by looking specifically at progesterone – often pointed to as an endocrine disrupter.

At the EPFL’s “Magistrale” graduation ceremony this year, Kristin Schirmer was recognised for her teaching work at the institution. In this interview she explains what this work means to her.

The "gene scissors" CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to precisely modify genes in order to study their function in an organism. A researcher at Eawag has now succeeded for the first time in establishing the gene scissors for a fish cell line of rainbow trout. This means that, as of now, genetically modified cell lines can be produced. These allow alternatives to ecotoxicological tests on living animals.

Barbara Jozef is the winner of the 11th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences.

Toxic substances in the environment can harm the nervous system of fish embryos. Now, researchers at Eawag have developed a computer model that helps to better understand how the damage occurs.

Open Science is an important development in science - open access to the results of research. Eawag supports these and makes a growing part of its research data, including descriptions, images and even software, available publicly and free of charge on the Eawag platform ERIC or, in special cases, on discipline-specific, international databases. ERIC complements the long-standing platform DORA for scientific publications.

The OECD gives the green light to the fish cell line assay developed at Eawag. This paves the way for companies and authorities around the world to determine the environmental toxicology of chemicals without having to resort to animal testing.

Toxicity tests are currently still carried out mainly on livestock. Within the context of environmental risk assessment, this is done most commonly on fish. An alternative method developed by Eawag researchers is currently overcoming crucial hurdles to its widespread use in practice. Thanks in part to the persuasive efforts of the scientists involved.

Ecotoxicological tests need to be extremely accurate – which often poses challenges in research and practice. Eawag has now developed a computer model that enables even more accurate testing at high throughput; the model is simple, widely applicable and saves resources.

In her PhD thesis, Alena Tierbach could show that the zebrafish embryo-derived PAC2 cell line expresses a fully functional mercapturic acid pathway.

The motto of today’s World Water Day is “Valuing water – What means water to you?”. With this motto, the United Nations wants to raise awareness of the vital importance of water and call on people to think about the value of water. In an interview, Eawag Director Janet Hering explains the importance of water for the aquatic research institute Eawag and also her personally.