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Project on microplastic pollution in the Danube region

Projects of the Interreg Danube region are co-funded by the European Union. The main obejective of the project “MicroDrink” is to work out basic principles that enable an assessment of the occurrence of microplastic in the groundwater and drinking water in the Danube region. 31 partners from Croatia (management) and Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia want, as part of the project, to exchange know-how and experience in the next two and a half years with regard to sampling, analytics, monitoring and risk assessment. The Environment Agency Austria will, as a project partner, supply expertise on sampling and analytics in order to develop harmonised methods. The project was kicked off with a meeting of all the project partners at the beginning of March 2024 in Zagreb.
 

 

MicroDrink is a follow-up project to the BoDEREC-CE project, which concentrated on newly occurring impurities in the drinking water, including microplastic, and as part of this, launched the first initiatives to improve the availability of data, know-how and capacities. With the MicroDrink project, the aim is, from January 2024 to June 2026 to record the current status of science on microplastics in the groundwater and drinking water in the Danube region, and to take stock of national case studies in the eight countries. A discussion of the basic principles for risk assessment is also planned. MicroDrink aims to build up and strengthen the instructional, administrative and technical capacities of practitioners and decision-makers from industry and politics at various levels, and to sensitise the general public to the environment problem of the contamination of waterways through microplastic in the Danube region. There are plans as part of the project to establish an open online knowledge database. This should provide a comprehensive overview of sampling procedures, laboratory instruments and analysis techniques, and also create synergies with earlier and ongoing EU projects that are occupied with water management and water protection in the Danube region. Over and above this, relevant national and transnational stakeholders are to be incorporated through specific meetings, workshops and events. An approach harmonised for the participating countries at EU and non-EU level is to be drawn up and tested on selected cross-border pilot locations, at which microplastic is to be monitored with new pilot measures. In Austria, the Federal Environment Agency and the State of Kärnten are cooperating as part of MicroDrink. Here, suitable measuring points are to be selected in a karst aquifer, samples are taken and analysed according to different methods, and potential discharge pathways are identified. A comparison of the methods and further findings will flow into the basic knowledge of the project, and be communicated as part of recommendations, workshops and trainings.
 
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