Novel Ways to Monitor and Eliminate Chlorinated & Fluorinated persistent chemicals in environmental sources and study of their health and environmental risks

The WONDERFUL project is dedicated to halogenated pollutants, which can be simultaneously characterized as non-volatile, persistent, and mobile in an aquatic environment. At the same time, these are "emerging" pollutants, i.e. anchored in the EU legislative framework only briefly or not at all. By definition, perfluorinated alkanes, alkyl sulfonic and alkyl carboxylic acids (PFAS, PFOS, PFOA), organophosphate flame retardants (OPFR), fluoroquinolin antibiotics, azole fungicides, and certain other biocidal substances meet these parameters. The basic objectives of the project are to monitor the presence of these substances in the aquatic environment, agricultural products, and sewage sludge in the EU, further, to characterize their toxicological effects through in vitro tests, to pilot-test selected technologies to eliminate them from environmental matrices and to formulate recommendations for preventive and technological measures to reduce the environmental load by these substances.