Swedish monitoring of hazardous substances

I was recently involved as an adviser in a report by the County Administrative Board in Västra Götaland (Länsstyrelsen) which has now been published [1]. [UPDATE: The PDF link at Länsstyrelsen’s page does not seem to work, but leads to another report in Swedish. I have reported this error to the web admin, we’ll see what happens. Once again, the PDF seems to work.] The report aims to identify gaps in the current monitoring system of hazardous substances in the Swedish environment. The report deals with effect based monitoring tools and their usefulness for predicting and/or observing effects of hazardous substances in the environment. The overall conclusion of the report is that there are several gaps in both knowledge and techniques, and a need for developing new resources. However, Sweden still has a good potential to adapt the monitoring system to fill the needs. I have been involved in one of the last chapters, describing the use of metagenomics if study ecosystem function (chapter 30.3). For people with an interest in environmental monitoring, the report is an interesting read in its entirety. For those more interested in applications for metagenomics I recommend turning to page 285 and continue to the end of the report (it’s only five pages on metagenomics, so you’ll manage).

1. Länsstyrelsen i Västra Götalands län. (2012). Swedish monitoring of hazardous substances in the aquatic environment (No. 2012:23). (A.-S. Wernersson, Ed.) Current vs required monitoring and potential developments (pp. 1–291). Länsstyrelsen i Västra Götalands län, vattenvårdsenheten.