Expert meeting on critical limits for heavy metals and methods for their application Proceedings

The Berlin meeting was structured according to its most important tasks (according to the recommendations of Sorrento 2002): - Review of the harmonised set of Critical Limits for heavy metals for soils and waters, whereby inclusion of limits for Hg and of human health effects was most important; - Further development of transfer functions of Pb, Cd and Hg for soils and sediments, with emphasis on their applicability to the broad spectrum of European soils; -General methodological aspects, including the - choice of approaches (critical loads model versus stand-still model) according to the 'decision tree', proposed in Sorrento (2002), - identification and European-wide mapping of present heavy metals pollution (Pb, Cd, Hg) of soils and their sources, - methods to consider other heavy metal inputs to soils and surface waters than atmospheric pollution, - peculiarities and applicability of an effect-based approach for Hg. These headings were at the same time the themes of three draft background documents provided before the expert meeting and the names and the scope of three working groups during the workshop. For each of the items a list of most relevant questions was prepared. The proceedings of the expert meeting in Berlin, provided for the benefit of a wider number of interested scientists, advisors and decision makers, contain a short reflection on future work to be done, the workshop report (Minutes), including the conclusions and recommendations of the three working groups and six annexes, as well as the abstracts of short presentations and posters presented at the meeting. (orig.) / SIGLE / Available from TIB Hannover: RN 8422(2003,47) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische Informationsbibliothek / DE / Germany