Jaroslav SLOBODNIK

Chairman NORMAN Association

Dr. Jaroslav Slobodnik is the Director of Environmental Institute in Kos, Slovakia. He has an extensive experience in implementation of the EU water legislation within numerous international projects. Among his specialisations are integrated river basin management and development of monitoring strategies. As a member of the advisory panel to the DG Environment of the European Commission he was involved in drafting institutional reform proposals of the Drinking Water Directive and Water Reuse Regulation. Since 2010 he is a Topic leader on the Assessment of Chemical Pollution issues in the River Basin Management Plans of all EU Member States. Since 2008 he is a Chairman of the NORMAN Association – a ‘science-to-policy’ network of more than 80 organisations in Europe and North America dealing with emerging substances in environment.

> How can non-target screening techniques support environmental risk assessment and chemicals managements: the NORMAN approach

It is increasingly recognised that the number of compounds measured today via target chemical analysis is not sufficient to provide an exhaustive overview of the status of the environment and that the application of non-target screening (NTS) techniques is needed in order to detect the presence of harmful substances potentially overlooked. There is also a need to promote harmonisation of high resolution-mass spectrometry- (HR-MS) based NTS protocols and their integration with biological monitoring tools to improve the identification of pollutants specific for individual European seas and rivers.

The NORMAN Association (www.norman-network.net) is an independent and highly recognised network of more than 80 research institutions, reference laboratories, industry, universities and regulatory bodies to support decision-makers in all decisions for the identification, monitoring, assessment and prioritisation of relevant emerging pollutants and their transformation products in the environment. An overview of the NORMAN NTS tools will be provided together with results of several case studies showing their practicality, risk assessment potential and regulatory implications in large-scale projects covering marine environment, waste water effluents and biota.