24986 Woutersen, Marjolein.indd

As described in chapter 1, there is a high demand for safe drinking water in present day's society, which has to comply with ever increasing quality standards. Several discoveries in the past two decades have led to an increasing public awareness of the risks of water pollution to both the human population and the environment. These include the discovery of the presence of endocrine disruptors, pharmaceuticals, drug residues and NDMA in surface and sometimes drinking water. As a result, there is an increasing pressure on the government and drinking water utilities to monitor the water quality and safety. This can be done by determination of the chemicals present in the water, but also by measuring the toxicity with cell assays or whole organisms. The introduction of whole organism biomonitors represents a first step towards a stronger focus on the use of toxicity as a measurement parameter in on-line surface water monitoring. These biomonitors are used as alarms by the drinking water companies, to close the surface water intake for drinking water production in case of a toxic event. However, the current biomonitors are only sensitive to compounds that have an acute toxic effect in the organism used, and are not able to respond to compounds with certain chronic and specific toxic effects, such as endocrine disruptors and genotoxic compounds. For this reason, there is a need to develop monitoring systems that can detect these specific toxic effects.