Pollutants of Priority Concern in Austrian Rivers

In this report by Umweltbundesamt (Environment Agency Austria) the occurrence of total mercury and methylmercury as well as trisphosphates has been investigated in three different compartments in the aquatic environment: Surface waters, sediments, suspended solids and biota. Besides methylmercury, all compounds were detected in all investigated matrices. Methylmercury occurred only in biota. Mercury was found to strongly bioaccumulate in biota and trisphosphates adsorbed predominantly to suspended matter. Comparing the observed mercury levels in water as well as in biota, almost all measured concentrations were higher than the respective environmental quality standards (EQS). As the evaluation is based on few samples – whereas the EQS refer to annual average values based on monthly sampling – further measurements are required.本报告由奥地利环境署（Umweltbundesamt，Environment Agency Austria）编制，针对水生环境中三类环境介质内的总汞、甲基汞及三磷酸盐的赋存状况展开了调查，调研对象涵盖地表水、沉积物、悬浮颗粒物与水生生物。除甲基汞外，其余所有目标化合物在全部调研基质中均被检出；甲基汞仅在水生生物样本中被发现。研究表明，汞在水生生物体内具备极强的生物富集能力，而三磷酸盐则主要吸附于悬浮颗粒物。对比实测得到的水体及水生生物中的汞含量水平，几乎所有浓度值均高于对应的环境质量标准（EQS）。由于本次评估仅基于少量采样样本——而环境质量标准的制定依据为基于月度采样的年均值——因此需开展进一步的采样检测工作。