Marine monitoring campaign in France and French overseas departments: more than 10 000 datasets from grab and passive sampling

A screening study of emerging contaminants was carried out in 2012 in coastal waters in both metropolitan France and overseas departments (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Reunion, Mayotte and French Guiana) as part of the National Action Plan against pollution of the aquatic environment, which requires the regular updating of the lists of substances to be included in monitoring programmes. The Action Plan stresses the need to set up a watch list of substances to be investigated at the national level in order to acquire missing information about the level of exposure to emerging contaminants in the aquatic environment and allow identification of substances for which specific actions need to be implemented. The Ministry of Ecology appointed ONEMA as principal contractor and INERIS as project leader. One of the main objectives of this screening study was to gain knowledge of the occurrence of substances of “emerging” concern in the marine environment. Different data were collected, such as the presence/absence of each investigated compound and the level of concentration observed in the aquatic environment (water and sediment). Moreover, the performance of different sampling techniques was assessed. This study contributes to increased knowledge of emerging pollutants in French waters and to the wider considerations for updating the list of relevant substances to be included in the new monitoring programmes to be established. Triplicate sampling of water at the same site followed by SBSE extraction displayed a high results variability, which limits the exploitation of the quantified results. Neverthless, the testing of in situ systems integrators – POCIS – and extraction by SBSE bars has proven the added value of these two complementary techniques for monitoring hydrophobic and hydrophilic compounds in marine water. Finally, analyses of sediment allowed a more complete assessment of the quality of the waterbodies