Laboratories Department
The Department of Laboratories, part of the INCDPM Bucharest, is equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure abiding to international standards of research in environmental protection. The Department of Laboratories is capable of responding to requests regarding the evaluation of environmental factors (air, water and soil) in order to fulfill the obligations that derive from the process of implementing the provisions of the Community acquis.
Part of the Department, the Water Quality Laboratory is an accredited laboratory according to the SR EN ISO/IEC 17025:2018 standard.
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Area Of Competence
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Activities conducted under the coordination of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA-Helsinki, Finland) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA-Parma, Italy) regarding the assessment of substances added to the Community Rolling Action Plan (CoRAP) as well as hazardous substances that are part of plant protection products, according to the European Regulation on Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). Under the guidance of the Ministry of Environment and the National Agency for Environmental Protection, in accordance to the REACH Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006 and Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market, the INCDPM Bucharest`s experts draw up technical reports on ecotoxicology and environmental behavior of target substances. Furthermore, the INCDPM Bucharest has designated members that take part in international working groups organized by the ECHA: PBT expert group, Committee for Socio-Economic Analysis (SEAC) and the Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC).
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Water quality assessment by determining organic and inorganic micropollutants; Development of experimental techniques, methods for in situ measurements, integrated monitoring; Development and improvement of techniques, methods and standards for the determination of water pollutants; Microbiological and biological monitoring; Evaluation of the environmental behavior and ecotoxicology of hazardous substances/products; Testing of absorbent products used in accidental pollution events.
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Air quality assessment by determining organic and inorganic micropollutants; Development of experimental techniques, methodologies for in situ measurements; Development and improvement of techniques, methods and standards for determination of air pollutants; Microbiological monitoring concerning indoor air contamination; Dispersion and modeling of air pollutants using a transmission model that includes their chemical transformations in the atmosphere.
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Soil quality assessment by determining organic and inorganic micropollutants; Development of experimental techniques, methodologies for in situ measurements, integrated monitoring; Development and improvement of techniques, methods and standards for determination of soil pollutants. Microbiologic monitoring.
Activities
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Development of experimental techniques, in situ and laboratory measurement methodologies;
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Research concerning the state of the environment and the evolution of its quality;
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Research on monitoring the quality of environmental factors: development, improvement and adoption of techniques, methods and standards for the determination of pollutants and contaminants that affect the quality of the environmental components;
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Development of methods for integrated monitoring of environmental components;
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Scientific approach to the design of monitoring networks and their technical parameters, in order to obtain the relevant information on quality indicators of environmental components;
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The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of surface water, drinking water, industrial and agricultural water resources, groundwater and wastewater;
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Evaluation of environmental behavior and the ecotoxicological profile of plant protection products and biocides, in accordance with the REACH Regulation;
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Evaluation of physicochemical and biological indicators for the purpose of determining the ecological state of natural or artificial aquatic ecosystems;
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Studies on physiological groups of bacteria involved in biogeochemical cycles of nitrogen, sulfur, carbon in water, sediments and soil;
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Applied Microbiology: Methods of microorganism identification and their interaction with the environment;
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Physico-chemical and bacterial characterization of water from different sources (e.g. wells/boreholes, swimming pools, bathing water, wastewater, surface waters);
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The characterization of the diversity of the microbial community from environmental samples by molecular techniques.
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Recovery of useful substances from wastewater;
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Testing of the absorbent products used in accidental pollution events;
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Implementing EN/ISO/OECD standards, requirements and methods; improving national methods for alignment with EU regulations.
Laboratories Infrastructure
ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer) NexIon 350X
Year: 2015
Producer: Perkin Elmer
The NexIon 350X ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer) is a high performance instrument especially designed to obtain a maximum speed of data acquisition and to minimize the time and costs associated with the cleaning or replacement of internal components. The instrument uses an Argon plasma torch as ion generator, plasma impedance fluctuations being continuously compensated by the radio frequency generator. The transition from the plasma pressure to vacuum is achieved through a set of three nickel cones assuring a highly focused beam of ions, neutral and photons. The beam resulting from the cones undergoes a first electro-magnetic separation using a quadrupole ion deflector. The positive ion beam is separated from the deflector at a 90° angle, also allowing the first m/z band-pass filtration of the ion beam sent to the reaction cell. The reaction cell quadrupole can be used in standard mode (without interaction with the ion beam), collision mode (interaction between ion beam – helium) or reaction mode (interaction between the ion beam and a reactive gas) to enable the management of various interference generated by the sample matrix. After the reaction cell, the ion beam is sent to the mass analysis quadrupole and the detector. This instrument can achieve an extended mass range (1-285 amu) and a high scan speed (more than 5000 amu/sec with data acquisition for all masses between Li and U). This provides superior performance in the determination of isotopic ratios, required in the detection of tracer isotopes from the environmental matrix and a more detailed view of the sequence of plasma events which enable a more comprehensive detection of nanoparticles size distributions.
Meet the Team
