Development of immunological assays for the analysis of pesticides and determination of their prevalence and fate in groundwater and water supply systems.

Immunological assays have turned out to be powerful means to detect pesticides and other environmental contaminants including some of their metabolites at the low concentrations (sub-ug/L) actually found in groundwater. A compound like BAM can be detected even at a concentration of 0.02 ug/L. The project aims at developing the methods in order to cover more pesticides, to improve sensitivity and specificity, and to immobilize the immunological agents on a microchip so that a whole spectrum of pesticides can be detected rapidly and cheaply. The specific role of E&R is to verify the applicability of the methods for groundwater analysis and analysis of water from water supply systems. Furthermore E&R will use the immunological assays during studies of biodegradation processes in groundwater, water treatment plants, ans water distribution systems.