Webinar: Toximeter for online toxicity assessment (in waters and watercourses)

00:19 - Now we will give a chance to those who join us a little later and I will fill this time with a short introduction.

00:27 - This webinar is co-organized by Ekotechnika and bbe Moldaenke.

00:33 - Ekotechnika, is a Czech company founded by my parents Hana and Milan more than 30 years ago.

00:42 - We are a consulting, trading and service company in the field of measuring technology with a focus on industrial applications and ecology.

00:53 - Ekotechnika has been representing bbe Moldaenke in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for almost 20 years.

01:03 - Bbe Moldaenke, bbe as biological - biophysical - engineering, is a German company with more than 20 years of tradition.

01:15 - It deals with two main areas: on the one hand, spectrofluorometers for chlorophyll analysis, which can recognize classes of algae - cyanobacteria.

01:27 - And the second area that will be discussed today is real-time biological early warning systems - online toximeters.

01:37 - In this area, bbe Moldaenke is the world leader.

01:41 - This is the end of the companies introduction.

01:43 - And I would like to mention a little bit about our motivation to organize this webinar.

01:50 - We, Ekotechnika, have been trying to raise awareness of continuous toximeters for 15 years.

01:56 - Nevertheless, during the Bečva case, various reactions of the responsible persons showed that the awareness of the possibility of controlling the toxicity of waters in Czech rivers continuously is generally very small to none.

02:16 - Even from the highest levels, we could hear that these are entirely scientific instruments that need to be tested in a test run or tested in a pilot deployment as if it were something new, as if it were not known that they had been used for decades all over the world.

02:37 - Colleague Sönke will talk about the use and spread of toximeters in Europe and elsewhere in the second part of our webinar.

02:47 - Furthermore, as the discussion around the Bečva case progressed, it seemed that it lacked proposals for solutions.

02:55 - Petitions were initiated: Most focus on identifying the perpetrators, asking for an explanation of the authorities’ actions, etc.

03:06 - For example, the Arnika’s petition has been established, which is already proposing its solutions and demanding: reduction of reporting thresholds for selected chemical substances, tightening of limits of effluents, or monitoring of a larger range of substances.

03:26 - But monitoring water quality continuously through laboratory analysis of an ever-increasing range of substances is at least problematic for many reasons: the time required to prepare samples, to perform the analysis, the amount of substances to be monitored and, last but not least, the repeated significant financial costs on these analyzes.

03:49 - And what if there is a leak, or even a deliberate release of a substance that is missing from the list? What if, for example, the sub-limit amount of individual substances that are on the list together create a poisonous cocktail? Toximeters are in principle non-specific.

04:10 - So they will not tell you what the toxic substance is.

04:15 - But they inform you always and immediately when the monitored water has a negative effect on the test organisms.

04:23 - And it’s up to us how we handle this information.

04:27 - If it will be enough for us that the device lights up orange or red like a traffic light.

04:33 - Or whether we will start immediate sampling, or it will alert everyone who will be interested via the Internet.

04:41 - Simply: The technologies exist, it’s up to us to use them.

04:48 - Thank you for being here with us at the webinar.

04:52 - And once again, hello, I am greeting everyone who arrived later.

04:59 - I will now have a few technical notes: I will ask you to keep your cameras turned off and the microphones muted (this way we should reduce the data transfer requirements).

05:15 - There will be time for questions after the presentations.

05:18 - You can send us questions during the presentations.

05:21 - Please chat, ideally a private message. If you ask in English, please contact the user bbe Moldaenke, ie my colleague Babak from bbe Moldaenke, who will then guide us through the questions or if you want to ask in Czech, send questions to me - user Matěj Kříž - Ekotechnika.

05:49 - Who is interested in record of this webinar that we are doing right now, (we are going to provide the English part of the record with Czech subtitles), please fill in the form on our website ekotechnika. com.

06:06 - I’ll send the link to the chat in a moment.

06:11 - And now I would like to introduce our speakers - our guests to you: Today’s program has two parts, introducing us to the topic and developing from static (laboratory) toxicity tests to dynamic online toxicity determination, we will be guided by Dr Detlev Lohse.

06:33 - Detlev Lohse studied biochemistry at the University of Hannover Germany and received his Ph. D from the University of Düsseldorf Germany in 1986.

06:42 - He spent more than 10 years in fundamental research specializing in plant biochemistry.

06:48 - For the last 22 years, Detlev has been focused on knowledge transfer regarding photosynthetic processes and algal pigments.

06:57 - The second part, focused on the use and spread of toximeters in Europe and elsewhere in the world, will be handled by the director of bbe Moldaenke, Mr. Sönke Kobarg.

07:09 - Sönke Kobarg studied applied physics at the University of Kiel.

07:13 - Since more than 20 years he is focused on online measurement methods and instruments for water quality control.

07:20 - In 2011 he joined bbe Moldaenke GmbH and he has been the general manager of the company since July 2014.

07:31 - And that’s all for me from the beginning. Now I switch to English.

07:37 - I now give the floor to Detlev. So Detlev if you are ready, floor is yours.

07:52 - OK, yeah, thank you very much Matej for this kind introduction.

08:01 - I have the pleasure to lead you through the first part of our webinare And here we prepared a presentation and…

08:17 - I would like to give you the title of this presentation.

08:24 - It is: a toxicity assessment in water … Detlev, could you please bring this presentation right I will do this… I will start this now so…

08:39 - Yes, it is working. We deal here now with toxicity assessment in the water and of course we want to introduce some parts that are important for the understanding of the toxicity.

08:52 - How it is done in the past, and how it is done in the present, and what will be in the future I will talk about toxicity itself and toxicity and biomonitoring, which is an essential part of toxicity recognition.

09:10 - We deal with dose-response effects, which is important to understand also in comparison to chemical analysis.

09:18 - And we want to talk about the daphnia, here Daphnia Magna, It’s a sort of daphnids, which can serve as a mortal organism for toxicity recognition.

09:31 - And now we want to emphasize toxic events and alarm ignition, how this can be performed.

09:39 - It’s not necessary to have an ideal organism, but you also have a deal recognise the effect on this organism.

09:48 - And then we want to show you the Daphnia Toximeter which is an instrument that is used for the recognition and automatic way to perform the toxicity analysis.

10:05 - The second part will deal with the applications of the Daphnia Toximeter.

10:11 - We will show you where it is used, who uses it, and what are the best ways to introduce this also in new regions and new areas.

10:23 - And this is important also for understanding while this instrument are now distributed worldwide and we can show you in which places they are.

10:34 - And I want to talk to you, to first, to describe I have to define the toxicity.

10:42 - We deal here with the acute toxicity but the toxicity describes any harmful effects caused by contact with the hazardous substances.

10:54 - And the acute toxicity comprises damaging effects which are visualized within a short time after exposure.

11:03 - And this is in opposite to the chronic effects which we do not deal with, they are also important.

11:10 - But what we want to show here is how organisms suddenly react to harmful substances.

11:19 - To see it here for example, this is an example of fish kills which from time-to-time happen when accidents happen and harmful pollution is released to rivers for example.

11:32 - Why do we need this? It is a very wide way because it affects not only the fish you could see in the last slide, also affects the soil and the air of course. And interestingly I found this picture below here from the sky of Ostrava.

11:55 - But here I want to deal with water, water quality, because poor water quality leads to infirmity, to disease, and at the end to death.

12:06 - And you have to know that many people, even in European Union, died from the quality of poor water, of bad water, sorry.

12:19 - What is now used for toxicity assessment? Of course we cannot use human being, like in the center of the slide.

12:28 - We have organisms that served for us as biomonitors to indicate toxicity and some of them are shown here: for example algae, we have here the daphnia, we will want to talk today about this organism.

12:47 - We have here a fish, which is a very old biomonitor.

12:51 - And this is another type, which may be serve much more for plants, for wastewater plants, this is luminescent bacteria.

13:03 - But all of them have their place in the accessity [???] of toxins.

13:13 - The biomonitors, they show reaction on harmful compounds, harmful compounds, that can be hazardous to human health, for example, and well established organisms is the daphnia and here is Daphnia Magna, and you can see here on the left side, it is a usual way how to grow them.

13:36 - That is very simple to put them into a baker, they show high reproducibility, they need little bit of food, that in this case is an algae, micro algae.

13:48 - And you can easily bread them. I did it as a boy on the shelf in the local window.

13:55 - So it is very easy to get this cultured. What is then done in traditional test it is the so-called static test to see below at the picture from this, where you have different dilution steps of your sample, and to each dilution step you add a certain amount of these organisms - of the daphnia, and then you look, for example, for an immobility or for the lethality of the organism and when you, for example, make a test with the compound at a certain concentration, you can see how the immobility is affected.

14:38 - And you can see here that after a certain concentration of a compound, you will find that there is a total immobility.

14:46 - So that means you have a sample - water sample and you check it with different dilution steps.

14:53 - So that means that you will have only one sample that you can investigate at a certain time.

14:59 - And the second thing what I have to mention: It takes time.

15:03 - For example after 24-hours 48-hours or even 96-hours this test is controlled by visual inspection which needs a long, long time.

15:16 - Yeah. What are now the advantages of these tests? Of course, these are established test organisms, there are thousands of publications which report the effects of different compounds on these organisms.

15:34 - They show high, very high sensitivity, which means that even at low concentration you find an effect on the organism.

15:45 - And of course, high reproductivity means, that you have a good availability of these, they are easy to breathe, you can do this easily if you have the right microalgae and good water quality for the growth.

16:03 - But the disadvantage is on the other side: This is you can only get one parameter.

16:08 - Which is either the organisms died or they are immobile for a certain amount and you have only this discrete sample from the flow.

16:19 - That means you take a sample, bring it to the lab and perform the test, and then you will get the results after a certain length of time.

16:28 - But this is a big disadvantage so you cannot react immediately to this pollution that you get inside of your water.

16:38 - Of course, in-between we had advanced chemical analysis and, of course, this analysis is important also for the future, but we have also some lack, in so far that you only can detect substances for which you’re looking for.

16:59 - You need special analyzers for example. And, of course, you have to bring the sample to the laboratory to perform this analysis and this needs, for example, an hours or days, or sometimes the samples are collected, for example, to subject them for HPLC - a gas chromatography analysis.

17:20 - So it is also costly, time costly and takes a lot of time.

17:27 - And again this only, the sample, only reflects the situation at a certain time where the sample is sampled.

17:37 - That means also a big advantage although it is always necessary to have such analysis.

17:46 - Another way which is also important is that you can also determine toxicity with the chemical approach.

17:53 - This is a nice example where you can see, when you look, for example, at the lower curve, you see here the effector response, effect of the organism, with the rise of concentration. This is a logarithmic scale and you see after certain times the curve raises.

18:16 - If you have synergis, that means, for example, certain cofactor, this can be carbon dioxide, pH etc.

18:26 - This can dramatically enhance the response.

18:29 - That means, that cannot be seen by chemical analysis, it can be only seen by the effect on the organisms itself.

18:39 - What that means, when you put this all together, usually a compound is not alone in the sample.

18:45 - You will find surrounding co-factors which can seriously affect the reaction and the response of the organism.

18:56 - Many of these things are overcome by the so-called dynamic daphnia test and here we want to introduce the Daphnia Toximeter II.

19:06 - As you can see it on the left side. It is now in an automated procedure.

19:13 - We have all this included here in instrument.

19:18 - For example, you see that here behind this is a chamber where these organisms daphnia are moving around and we have a continuous flow through this instrument for uninterrupted time for 24-hours 7-days a week, unmanned, and we found here now the real time toxicity assessment.

19:44 - So that means, the organisms are always observed inside of a chamber and this is monitored here on the screen.

19:52 - And we have also a software in, an automatic alarm recognition, which is performed all the time.

20:01 - And the run is also evaluated, for example, for statistics.

20:05 - Of course this needs some adoption with a superior system and therefore this is not only a stand alone instrument but it can be easily integrated into a bigger network.

20:17 - And one thing which is also important to mention is that we have here a hardware supervision that excludes failure alarms, so that, for example, if the temperature is too high or we have a stop in the flow it will not give an alarm, as a real alarm, but that will tell you that there is something wrong with the hardware.

20:41 - And now, how is this done? And this is really superior for that what we compare to static tests.

20:47 - We have observation by CCD camera of the movements of the organisms all the time What we follow up, is for example the speed of the organisms and the distribution inside of the Chamber.

21:02 - We have a moving which, what we called fractal dimensions, which is the curviness and the angle of the movings.

21:09 - We will show you in the later short video. We also have group-social behavior, distance and grouping.

21:18 - And we have swimming height. And last but not least we have also the number of the active daphnia swimming around.

21:26 - Which resembles the number of mobile or immobile daphnia in the static test.

21:34 - All these parameters are put together and form the so-called toxic index which resides about the situation it’s green or yellow or red situation which is an alarm situation.

21:48 - This is shown here: in this slide you see here that toxic substances in a waterflow change the organism’s behavior.

21:57 - It becomes extraordinary and this means that the parameters are analysed and it puts points of toxicity to a list and when it exceeds a certain alarm scheduled then it will switch to a so called red situation, where you see that as a traffic light which turns to red.

22:22 - Well, and then a biomonitor gives an alarm.

22:25 - Outside for example over networking. And that is what is the principle behind all the other time when this instrument is working.

22:38 - With a good water quality chosen traffic light which is green.

22:44 - And I will show you here, at the end of the last slide, something that you can see on the screen.

22:49 - You have here on the left, that is a picture-photograph of a daphnia and here in the middle you see the tracks of the daphnia, what they have done in the past during the last minute… And here on this site will see the traffic light which illustrates that the quality is quite good and below you see here the toxic index which means everything is green no factors show that there are toxic in, toxic substances inside of the water.

23:26 - I can illustrate this little bit better, for example, when I do this,…

23:34 -… picture. Sorry. This is not what I wanted to show you.

23:41 - Now it comes. Yeah, this is a screenshot of the moving daphnia, to see on the left side and then do you have here tracks in the middle.

23:51 - You see that they are completed. We have here now measurements and here on the right side are different parameters.

23:58 - What you see is the result in this toxic index.

24:03 - And here you see a certain amount of toxicity, in the number for example and some of this which forms the toxic index.

24:13 - And at the and I can show you that we also have this information about the process.

24:22 - For example we can follow up what is going on with the heating, what is going on with the temperature, what is going on with the pumps etc. at the progress.

24:33 - And this illustrates that you will have a perfect control all the time when you perform this measurement.

24:42 - Thank you very much, this was very theoretical - I know, but we want to go a little bit more in the practice and I thank you very much for the first moment and of course I will be available for questions.

24:59 - Thank you very much Detlev. Sönke? Maybe you can… Yes,…

25:10 - Good afternoon for my side and thank you very much for your participation here on this webinar this afternoon.

25:17 - After Detlev has explained the principles of the Daphnia Toximeter the dynamic daphnia test I would like to give you an overview about the application and also about the distribution of the toximeters.

25:32 - So in my first part I would like to explain where are the established applications of toximeters.

25:42 - So, and I will show you a kind of circuit. In the first step and this is a major group of the users.

25:52 - It’s environmental monitoring EPAs and environmental monitoring authorities around the world. And here I’ve just given an example as a reference.

26:03 - This is the Institute for hygiene and environment Hamburg in the end it’s the EPA in Hamburg who have operated since decades a network of monitoring stations in the area of City Hamburg.

26:19 - So, after the environmental monitoring authorities the next big user group of toximeters are waterworks.

26:26 - Of course especially if the waterworks are using surface water to process the drinking water and we have users who continuously control the quality of the raw water they are taking from the rivers or from dams.

26:47 - And he is also an example of the user: it’s the waterworks in Konstanz Lake Konstanz in Germany.

26:58 - In this stage I would like to mention that we have a lot of references of toximeter users, but in the majority of the cases our users want to keep it confidential.

27:13 - So we are not allowed to name them. The names I show here during this presentation of course it’s allowed and we are free to communicate that these are users of the toximeters.

27:24 - So after the environmental monitoring authorities , after the waterworks, also industrial applications we have.

27:34 - I call it here “Food industry” and you see that two brands, it is a German beer Warsteiner and of course in the international group Heineken who used the toximeter to control the quality of the very important raw material - water - for their product.

27:55 - And I think like in Germany, also in the Czech Republic beer is kind of liquid bread so I sorted it into the food industry.

28:05 - So after the food industry we have users in the area of wastewater treatment plants.

28:12 - You see I put here a red check box in brackets because it’s more or less it’s a new application and some areas of the word it’s extensively used I will show you later a short example from South Korea where wastewater treatment plants are forced by law to monitor, continuously, the quality of the effluent.

28:36 - And the reason is quite obvious because in the end the wastewater the treated wastewater will be released again to the surface waters and then we are back to the river system, for instance.

28:49 - So let’s have a look at environmental monitoring authorities: The first application and here again, as an example, the EPA Hamburg you see on the right hand side: this is the control room in the central department of the EPA and you see here a map of city of Hamburg where you see here the red dots the locations of the measuring stations.

29:15 - In total there are 9 stations in operation along the Elbe river and some tributaries.

29:23 - In four of the stations they use the advanced monitoring programme where they also applied, besides and basic parameters, the toximeters to identify toxic events.

29:39 - And this is of course the main purpose. Here I would like to show you a very short video.

29:46 - It’s 30-seconds, impression about the inside of a container.

29:52 - In this case it’s a big container where they have installed a couple of online monitoring devices and here in the front you see the Daphnia Toximeter.

30:04 - But I would just start the video, so that you have an impression about the measuring container from the EPA Hamburg.

30:15 - So, yeah, here you see the Daphnia Toximeter.

30:19 - In this case it has two chambers. Detlev showed in his presentation one with one chamber.

30:25 - With the two chambers you have across and a double check and more redundant alarm system, because, in this case both chambers are evaluated by the software independently.

30:38 - So, and here, yeah, this is the screen. Detlev has shown in the video and this is the view to the user.

30:46 - But it’s normally operated automatically and nobody has to be there at the site.

30:53 - From time to time the people from the authority to maintain what is required to maintain.

31:01 - So, yeah, here you see the different, some of the parameters that Daphnia Toximeter continuously measures, so the behaviour, movement parameters from the daphnia in the little chamber and, yeah, the purpose is to get an early stage system warning.

31:24 - If there’s some harmful substances released in the water.

31:28 - And then you see here, as Detlev explained, when the toxicity index reaches the threshold and if the threshold is reached then the toximeter indicates it’s alarm situation.

31:44 - Yeah, the purpose of course it’s obviously.

31:47 - So another application in the field of Environmental monitoring is a measuring station and the Rhine river.

31:58 - Here you see: it’s in a modern building beside a very old bridge that goes over the Rhine river.

32:06 - But you see also a little bit… One of the purposes of the station because upstream you have here the industrial site from BASF and it’s the biggest industrial side in Europe with a lot of production facilities and an own wastewater treatment plant and before BASF releases the water to the Rhine river, they treated of course and then few kilometres downstream there is located this measuring station at that expressly also is installed that place to measure the quality of the Rhine river that was close to the effluent of the big industrial wastewater treatment plant.

32:53 - So it’s the kind of mixture: it’s an indirect monitoring of the wastewater and of course generally it’s a station that continuously measures the quality of the Rhine river.

33:07 - So here is the short view inside the monitoring station.

33:12 - As the Rhine river is very broad in that area, they operate more than one system.

33:19 - They extract samples from the one side of the Rhine and also from the other side of the Rhine.

33:26 - So that they have a better view about what’s coming along in the entire Rhine river.

33:33 - Here you see one of our long-term users: Dr. Peter Diehl, who since years is operating the toximeters.

33:45 - So, now I come to the next application from environmental monitoring authorities to the waterworks.

33:53 - As I said in the first slide, this is one example, it’s waterworks in Konstanz and Lake Konstanz and they’re also since years operating the toximeter to have immediately an information if there is something wrong with the raw water they are extracting from the Lake Constance.

34:20 - So then, I come to the next next stage: it’s food industry.

34:25 - As I said I have here two breweries where I am allowed to name them.

34:30 - One is the brewery here in Germany. It is still a family-owned Brewery.

34:35 - They’re located there in a very, very beautiful area, and they have their own water resource.

34:42 - So that’s the reason why this brewery is located there, because the water resources they’re very suitable for the production of beer.

34:51 - And years ago they had an accident with - it was a van - a truck with harmful substances, in the end nothing has happened but the people in charge they thought about how to handle such kind of risk.

35:07 - So they decided to operate a toximeter. So on the right hand side you see your reference letter.

35:16 - It was very nice when we received this. It’s a production site from Heineken in Brazil and this production site they’re using river water and extracting river water for the production process and for the same reasons how to handle potential risk.

35:36 - How can we get aware at a very early stage that there’s something harmful in our water resources. Yeah, and there…

35:45 - This is also what I want to express with this.

35:48 - Em. So a brewery is in industrial site the main purpose is to produce the beer and we have during the years we have developed the toximeters that way, that we, our aim was to reduce the requirement of maintenance and also industrial site is able to operate toximeter, so the maintenance requirement is reduced as much as possible.

36:22 - So then I will come to the 4th stage of application: the wastewater treatment plants itself.

36:29 - Here you see the wastewater treatment plant close to our premises, in Kiel.

36:35 - It’s a middle or big size wastewater treatment plants and they effluent, they also operate a Daphnia Toximeter to be sure that what they are releasing back to nature, and in this case the Baltic Sea, that they are sure it has a high quality.

36:56 - And when we installed this, it was 5 years ago, the operator and we were very happy to see that the Daphne Toximeter under normal conditions is able to be operated at the effluent of the wastewater.

37:13 - It means in a good operated wastewater treatment plan the treated water will have close quality like drinking water.

37:23 - Because, as Detlev said, a daphnia is very sensitive to a broad range of toxic substances.

37:29 - And here you see again some time series of the different parameters, and here you see the toxicity index.

37:38 - It’s really low. So it’s far beyond the alarm thresholds.

37:45 - So, but during the operation they had a problem and I’m allowed to show this.

37:50 - There was certainly an increase of the toxicity index, the active organism reduces, there were changes in the velocity of the movements, and it carried out in the end it was, indeed, a misoperation of the wastewater treatment plan.

38:10 - And in this particular case they have overdosed, for some reason, the flocculation substance they use in the flocculation process.

38:19 - And in this case it was ferrous sulfate and so it was too much ferrous sulphate used in the plan and the daphnia at the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant identified that there is something wrong.

38:34 - It was not that serious in the end for nature, but the operators were very glad and happy that they saw this and noticed this in the very early stage.

38:46 - So as a very short view to abroad. These are numbers from South Korea.

38:55 - Once I had here a delegation from South Korea.

38:58 - They were from the Korean environmental corporation.

39:02 - It’s the national authority of the environment in Korea.

39:07 - And as I mentioned very shortly in the beginning: by law, the big wastewater producers, they are forced to monitor, continuously, the quality of the effluent.

39:20 - So normally they are forced to measure five parameters.

39:24 - Like: total nitrogen, total phosphorus, chemical oxygen demand, suspended solids and pH.

39:33 - So these are the standard fives every of these big plants have to monitor continuously.

39:39 - And in that area, where the wastewater treatment plants release the water close to drinking water extraction, they are also forced to use biomonitors, to see also in a very early stage if there is some harmful substances released from a wastewater treatment plant.

39:59 - Yeah and you see it’s in total 1000 wastewater treatment plants forced to measure online the quality of the discharge, and approximately 60 or 70 also forced to use biomonitors to control the effluent.

40:17 - Yeah, short view about the distribution. After I have shown some examples of application and, yeah, you see here Germany - Europe and the countries where toximeters are in use, and of course the main application here is a environmental monitoring, where they monitor in different stations along the big rivers like the Elbe river, the Danube river, the Rhine river and the Meuse river in the Belgium and the Netherlands.

40:52 - So… When we have a look in the world.

40:57 - You see here: We have now more than 300 toximeters installed worldwide.

41:04 - The majority here in Europe. But also in Asia, with a big market in South Korea.

41:13 - We have installed 130 and in the US - America: 26 and in other countries 16.

41:21 - So in total more than 300. I would like to express with this that the toximeters are commonly in use.

41:29 - Of course it’s a kind of niche market application.

41:33 - But with more than 300 installed worldwide we have a lot of experience together with our users and customers.

41:44 - And with this I would like to end my speech and I thank you again for your attention.

41:51 - And if you have any questions, please, feel free to ask.

41:56 - We will be happy to answer them. Thank you very much, Sönke.

42:01 - Nice presentation. Actually we have a lot of questions to be honest.

42:06 - I think that we have close to one-quarter…

42:11 - 15 minutes to finish our journey. So what I will try to select some of these questions.

42:20 - And the first question, it has two parts. First part I would like to ask from Detlev - Dr. Lohse.

42:29 - Would you please tell us a little bit more about identity, or this behaviour of daphnia.

42:37 - The question comes from this point, that, for example: is it like this, that when a daphnia is swimming slowly it means pesticides or on other hand, if they’re swimming quickly it means heavy metals? Can we distinguish different toxins by the daphnia behavior? Or is it something else? Yeah, it is an interesting question.

43:00 - But the answer is not that easy. OK,. .

43:07 - You can probably sometimes visualise that they have certain patterns.

43:14 - For example when we have a very high ionic strength inside of the water, that leads, for example, to something like a tumbling of the movement.

43:27 - But, it’s too related to a certain sort of compound.

43:31 - It is not possible. Because it can,… It is too variable.

43:36 - The organism in wholesome illustrates or reflects the toxic effects.

43:46 - You may imagine that this is much better than what we can say when we can sort it to different sort of compounds.

43:57 - Let’s imagine, for example, heavy metals. You know, heavy metals can be very harmful, but sometimes they are not harmful.

44:05 - For example when they are combined with such called chelates, they cannot exhibit their toxicity to the organism, because these active groups inside or the active [???] they are deactivated.

44:22 - That means that, at this moment, they are not that toxic, in the sense of acute toxicity or they can bring out chronic effects.

44:32 - But here we focus on acute toxicity. Therefore, the answer is quite clear.

44:39 - Sometimes it can be related but it is not a really good tool to determine certain compounds.

44:47 - So, therefore, it is also, and, this can be answered in extended question, it can also not reflect the concentration of the compound itself.

44:58 - Yeah, that means, that you will not get a clear answer how much it is inside.

45:03 - When I showed you the first slide of the static test, you could see that there is a quite good relation between the concentration and the mobility.

45:12 - So, therefore, this is quite easy to maintain, when you have only reagent in the presence of this daphnia.

45:21 - In the circumstances where you have a complex mixture, that you usually can expect under natural conditions, you will not find such a way of determination.

45:34 - So, therefore,. . Clearly to say: it is not related, but the advantage is that it shows toxicity.

45:44 - Yeah, We cannot distinguish different toxins but we can detect toxicity itself - acute toxicity.

45:52 - Yeah. And the second part of the question now: Would you like to ask from you again, Dr. Lohse? The question is that: What is the influence of various climate conditions like freezing or other impacts of this weather condition on daphnia.

46:16 - Perhaps, the question comes from the monitoring stations.

46:19 - Or how, what is the limitation of daphnia, operating daphnia.

46:26 - This is also an important question. We solved within the Daphnia Toximeter because a sample water is prepared.

46:38 - That means that this is brought to a certain temperature and a chamber where daphnia are swimming is well temperatured.

46:47 - Is at constant temperature, usually 20°C, where the organisms feel quite well.

46:55 - So that means, this water, even if it is a low water sample from the river for example or it is a water which is too hot, than it has to be temperatured to get a good quality temperature for the survival of this organism.

47:17 - So this stuff does not affect the organism.

47:20 - What is important to know is another point with which we have to deal with is the, for example , that the organism needs a certain amount of oxygen.

47:29 - That means that they should have at least 2-4 mg/l of oxygen, otherwise they will be harmed by it.

47:40 - But this is something which is usually automatic in a measuring station for example, when they have sensors like pH, conductivity or [???] etc. etc.

47:52 - But this is also something which has to be taken into consideration, of course.

47:59 - Babak: Thank you very much. The second question has two parts.

48:04 - First part I will ask from Mr. Kriz - Matej.

48:08 - And the second part from Mr. Kobarg. So I would like to ask that: Do you know which devices are planned. . (for Matej). .

48:18 - Do you know which device is planned to be installed on the river Bečva? And when this could be done? Matej? OK.

48:29 - I will answer it in Czech, if it is OK? Babak: You are welcome. Please please enjoy it.

48:36 - We unfortunately,. . I guess I’ll bit disappoint you.

48:39 - We have got the same information about this topic as you, that means from the media.

48:46 - Nobody contacted us in this matter yet. That is basically a short answer.

48:57 - Yeah, I already answered it. All information we got is only from the media.

49:02 - Nobody contacted us in this case, so. . Yet, so… So let me ask the second part of question for Mr. Kobrag: It is discussed it might be used for continuous monitoring in water or the river itself.

49:21 - But some question comes, that maybe it would be better to install it at the outlet of any sort of plants that are producing pollution into the river.

49:33 - What is your idea? Based on applications you showed us.

49:36 - What do you think? This is why I picked up this example from South Korea.

49:43 - But this is an exception. This is really exception.

49:46 - I haven’t met other parts of the world. That’s strictly like in South Korea.

49:50 - But from my opinion, if you remember the circle I have shown on the first slide: everything belongs together.

50:00 - And if there is a high risk in the effluent of a big industrial area, now from an environmental view of thinking, I think it would be good to go at that specific spot, but I have doubts that this will be commonly distributed in the entire Europe.

50:21 - So in Europe it’s more kind of self-responsibility and thinking and of course I also like that.

50:28 - So, but, operation of monitoring stations along the rivers I think this is a very good kind of compromise.

50:39 - Yeah. As I also showed this example here in Germany at the Rhine river, definitely, the location of this measuring station was selected because of this very nearby big - huge industrial area.

50:55 - OK. And would you mind if I ask, because we haven’t time now, we ask another question.

51:00 - For how large streams or rivers can the toximeter be used? What recommended flow range do we have? Or is there any sort of instruction in this regard? How big should be the river where we install a toximeter.

51:21 - Do you have any idea about this? Mr. Kobarg? Let Detlev, please, Detlev.

51:30 - In principle it is also a question of what you want to survey.

51:35 - It can be a very small river but it can be a very big river.

51:39 - I think the best recommendation is where you see potential for hazards that should be a place where you should apply such a toximeter.

51:51 - And of course, we know that in, people got more and more aware of this and to use America for example, it is quite usual to ask everyone to participate in such monitoring, for example, by visually inspection.

52:10 - But I think this cannot be done automatically 24 hours or 7 day a week, where you see that it might be recommended to apply such an instrument.

52:23 - And it can be a short outlet of this or it can be a large outlet this, it can be also inside of the factory where, for example, you produce water, cooling water, for example, that could be affected by harmful compounds.

52:39 - And can be released in open waters. So therefore it depends really on the place where you want to survey this.

52:48 - We recommend, in this way, that someone who wants to, or considers such an application make contact with us.

52:58 - Because the installation and addressment of such a toximeter really depends on the site where it should be installed.

53:08 - We have our engineers that can support you and give you advice for all the situations.

53:14 - And yes, you can expect from the size of the instrument and from the parts which are inside it is a little bit more complicated, and it needs, of course, some adjustments from our side, and needs, also, some skills from the operator to get the full information.

53:36 - And this means: Ask us first, and we will collaborate with you about the certain place of installation.

53:46 - Thank you very much and I will take this opportunity to ask a second question for Dr. Lohse: Would you tell us a little bit more about the maintenance of these devices? How difficult is the operation? Do we need any special skills requirement? How about the time consuming? Detlev: Frankly said, of course, it needs some time. Yeah.

54:13 - It needs some time. You have to consider two things: First thing is, as I told you, is the availability of the organisms.

54:23 - You have to breed them. That is not that difficult, but you also have to maintain a certain temperature, for example, to keep them well.

54:33 - This takes some time. And you also need someone who is a good skilled operator.

54:42 - This also takes some time. At the beginning of such an instrument, we closely collaborate with such operators to teach them and to bring it into a smooth operation.

54:59 - This means, at the beginning, some more work.

55:03 - When it is ready, introduced, and it is operating under normal conditions, one can say this takes, lets say, 2 hours per week to maintain the instrument and maybe another hour for the breeding of the instrument.

55:21 - If you have a two chamber system, that means two chambers where daphnia are swimming.

55:26 - It takes a little bit more time. But it is all what you have.

55:30 - Open, or clearly said at the beginning, it needs some more time and, but what is more important is, what we recommend, that we should have, when we install such an instrument, a responsible person.

55:48 - Responsible for this toximeter. Where, we get to know, that this person will be also quite often at the place and perform the service and maintenance and such a person will learn quickly know how to use and how to operate the system.

56:08 - That is what we can recommend. And at the end, I think, when it is operating after a certain while, it works, maybe unmanned.

56:21 - That means, once a week someone goes up there, cleans the tubes and replace some rebases of the daphnia which lived there inside in this chamber for around about 1 week.

56:33 - Yeah? And then they have to be exchanged. That’s all you have to do.

56:36 - Yeah. Thank you very much Detlev. But the last question, because we are going to,. .

56:42 - limitation of time. So for Matej: And the question is that: Are there any units or any Daphnia Toximeters or devices related to toximeters already in use in Czech Republic? I will also answer in Czech, OK? So. . Two toximeters are owned by the Czech Water Research Institute.

57:18 - Which has been successfully operated for over 15 years with very interesting results.

57:28 - That’s, probably, all. Water Research Institute.

57:31 - There is one of these recently in the Czech Republic but I have no permission to publish this yet.

57:40 - That’s all, yeah. OK. Thank you very much.

57:47 - I guess that our journey finishes here. I wish that you enjoyed it, and that it was helpful.

57:54 - So I would like to give it to Matej to say the last word and say goodbye to everybody in your language.

58:01 - So, from our point of: thank you very and goodbye.

58:03 - Detlev: Thank you for your attention. Sönke: Yeah, thank you.

58:06 - So I would like to warmly thank to colleagues from bbe Moldaenke, thank you very much.

58:14 - Thank you all for your presence here, for your interest.

58:19 - I believe that we will continue to be connected.

58:22 - Questions that have not been answered during the online broadcast now will be included in our blog post, which we will publish on our website.

58:34 - And we will keep you informed about the development of toximeters in the Czech Republic.

58:42 - So thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much.

58:52 - Good bye. Good bye. Bye. Bye. .