Beyond individual scientists, this collaboration will connect highly complementary communities, while pushing the boundary of knowledge on the highly topical societal matter of environmental contamination. In this particularly challenging and ambitious research field, our project will enable quality knowledge exchange and identification of the key questions, to act as a spring board for future projects of larger scale, including Horizon Europe calls. In addition to the meetings/workshops, labwork will allow acquisition of original data which will simultaneously enrich existing studies for publication and act as exploratory studies in support of future project applications.
This project is formed of 3 research stays at IFREMER in the course of 24 months. In a first research stay, this project will consider and initiate a major research application (HORIZON-CL6-2023-ZEROPOLLUTION: Integrated assessment and monitoring of emerging pollutants) and explore potential joint interests in the EU PARC initiative (Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals), JPI Water or JPI Ocean, and ANR or RCN
The second research stay will be a spring board for designing/testing of passive sampler exposure system for the PolarPod expedition and explore options for value-added externally funded project based on the PolarPod expedition, (ii) partnerships with other potential platforms for scientific work in the Southern Ocean. We will also combine and discuss analytics and data from both organisations on perfluoro compounds in the marine environment (sediment/water/biota) aiming at improving robust and reliable PFAS screening in complex matrices. The final research stay will focus on plastic additives such as organophosphorus esters. We will combine passive sampling and analysis expertise at both institute to design protocols for strategies for their effective sampling in the aquatic environment.