User-friendly BLM

The new Guidance for deriving Environmental Quality Standards (EQS) under the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) supports the use of a tiered compliance assessment regime for metals that incorporates both correction for natural background concentrations and bioavailability. However, it does not provide practical tools to implement a bioavailability-based compliance regime. Current BLM/WHAM normalizations for Cu, Ni, Zn and Pb are time-consuming and not user-friendly for regulatory use. To address this, Bio-met was developed.

Bio-met is a user-friendly tool to assess Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) compliance of metals under the EU Water Framework Directive. The tool requires input of the following abiotic water parameters: DOC, pH, and hardness concentration. When used as part of a tiered approach, Bio-met provides water managers with an efficient way to account for metal bioavailability in a transparent way and deliver a robust metric of potential environmental risk.

Bio-met is based on scientifically validated Biotic Ligand Models (BLMs) and accounts for the bioavailability of copper, nickel, zinc, and lead with just one click!

A website has been developed that serves as a portal for all aspects of metal bioavailability and its implementation, including an online version of the user-friendly Bio-met tool.

The tool has been jointly developed by ARCHE Consulting and WCA, and is sponsored by NIPERA, IZA, ECI, and ILA.

To use the Bio-met tool, users must register on the dedicated website and obtain a login account in order to access the tool and all supporting information.