reflect the position or opinion of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the

Overview

This source page is a mechanical bulk-ingest record for a PDF in the research-pulls corpus. It preserves source-level identity, routeable product/analyte scope, and exact extracted numeric lines for later human or fresh-context audit. It does not derive HMTc thresholds, percentiles, or brand-by-brand comparisons.

Key numbers

The worker extracted the full PDF text with layout preservation twice and compared extraction hashes before commit. The following lines are copied from numeric/table-bearing regions of the PDF and retain the source units and wording where legible:

under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This means
candidates for the 4th WL but for which a reliable PNEC or analytical method are missing (Table 7); and priority
priority 1 category as the most suitable candidates for inclusion in the next WL, while seeking further
information was received which helped to make them suitable candidates (see Table 6). Likewise, PNEC value
Table S1. List of the most suitable WL candidate substances, fulfilling the selection criteria, modified following comments
meeting on 17th May 2022). In bold, the seven substances finally identified for inclusion in the 4th Watch List. The table
Azoxystrobin 131860-33-8 Fungicide used as 0.2 µg/l(1) Water
Diflufenican 83164-33-4 Herbicide used as 0.01 µg/l(1) Water
Fipronil 120068-37-3 Insecticide 0.00077 µg/l(1) Water
Metformin and its 657-24-9 and Pharmaceutical 156 µg/l(1) Water
Sunscreen agents 70356-09-1 UV filters 3 µg/l(4) Water
Cefalexin 15686-71-2 Human medicine 0.08 µg/l(6) Water
Free cyanide 57-12-5 (CN-); 74- Industrial and 0.26 µg/l(7) Water
ciprofloxacin were identified as suitable candidates, and then included (EU 2018/840). Only these three
1, while the criteria for selecting suitable candidates amongst the possible substances for inclusion in the WL
samples in Sc2 and Sc3 are commonly set equal to half of the LOQ as stipulated in Directive 2009/90/EC. Other
in the JRC prioritisation dataset (2014) or with the LOQ as suggested in the WISE dataset of the EEA (i.e. the
Hazard information was collected from various sources (Table 1) for all the potential candidates.
Table 1. Sources for EQS/PNEC values and hazard information.
A literature review of available analytical methods was carried out for all the candidate substances (Table 2).
Table 2. Sources for analytical methods.
Tables 3, 4 and 5 summarise potential candidates identified by the JRC for the next WL. The substances were
(Gomez Cortes et al. 2020) as good candidates but not shortlisted for inclusion in the 3 rd WL. Table 4 presents
of the previous review (Gomez Cortes et al. 2020). Finally, Table 5 presents substances of emerging concern
Table 3. Potential candidates for the WL identified during the previous WL review but not selected for the 3rd WL (Gomez Cortes et al. 2020). The table shows for each candidate substance
and herbicides, pigments, pharmaceuticals Officially recognised in the EU as 0.22 (NL legal standard AA- EQS, (RPHPLC) (LOD
herbicide propanil and an azo dye for lasting effects (ECHA) 0.2 (water) and 0.039 mg/kg ww (Börnick et al., 2001)
Potentially persistent, low potential for 10 µg/kg sediment dw (sediment
Levonorgestrel 797- Human medicine PT, ED 0.00001 (Janusinfo SE, Fass, SE, HPLC-MS/MS (LOQ
genital system (Janusinfo, SE) 0.000016 μg/L (FASS text of 0.00033)
tonnes per year Fish (chronic, SSD HC5) = 1.11µg/L
Cu2O substance is approved for use as a = 16.17mg/kg (RAChigher
Table 4. Substances suggested by individual MS and during internal consultation for the 3 rd WL report (Gomez Cortes et al. 2020) as good candidates for future revisions of the WL. The table
(Pyrethroids) Pesticides database) R 0.001 µg/L (JRC derivation (Loos GC-APCI-MS/MS 12.5 pg/L
6.3 µg/kg ww (AT, 2013 monitoring in small
Lambda- 91465-08-6 PPP and Biocide Insecticide Approved 2 PBT criteria (BT not P) (EU PNECfw Water (LOD):
cyhalothrin Pesticides database) 0.00019 µg/L (DK and INERIS) GS-MS/MS 0.0005 μg/l
Authorised as PPP in: AT, BE, BG, CY, CZ, 0.00002 µg/L (NL QS) Sediment (LOD)
(Pyrethroids) long lasting effects (ECHA) 0.000041 µg/L (Cyfluthrin GC-MS/MS 0.001 µg/L
Esbiothrin or 260359-57-7 Insecticides T potentially P (Allethrin) Esbiothrin: Water (LOD):
Allethrin 584-79-2 Not approved as PPP (Allethrin) PT, R (Esbiothrin) PNECfw GC-MS/MS 0.001 µg/L
(Pyrethroid) Not approved as Biocide (Esbiothrin) Very toxic to aquatic life, is very 0.41 µg/L (Norman network, (USGS, 2009)

Methods (brief)

to ensure that enough high-quality monitoring data are collected for their risk assessment. Therefore, seven
WL to ensure that enough high-quality monitoring data are collected for their risk assessment. Therefore, seven
monitoring data are collected for their risk assessment.
collected or derived considering toxicity effects to aquatic freshwater organisms (PNECfw,eco). For highly
found or was often very limited. Furthermore, not only data availability but also the quality of the collected
of non-detected or non-quantified samples, called censored concentrations (Gardner 2011; Helsel 2012; Shoari
Thus, the usage of non-quantified samples in exposure datasets is a challenge when not all the limits of
quantification (LOQs) of applied analytical methods are adequate in relation to the PNEC. In this report, the
and non-quantified samples). Instead, the Scenario 3 (Sc3) is a dataset containing quantified monitoring data
plus non-quantified data for which ½ LOQ ≤ PNEC. The Sc3 is a more relevant data scenario for making a risk
samples in Sc2 and Sc3 are commonly set equal to half of the LOQ as stipulated in Directive 2009/90/EC. Other
substitutions are also possible (for example at LOQ). If the level of censoring is high, then comprehensive
estimated assuming substitution of non-quantified data (censored data) either with half of the LOQs as applied
in the JRC prioritisation dataset (2014) or with the LOQ as suggested in the WISE dataset of the EEA (i.e. the
Hazard information was collected from various sources (Table 1) for all the potential candidates.
First, EQS were collected from reports or online databases, or from literature, in particular if the methodology
Second, PNEC values were collected, with a particular focus on the substances where no EQS value was
Third, PNECs were collected from the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) dossiers (http://echa.europa.eu/) and

Implications

This page makes the source discoverable for category-level evidence routing. Values remain source-native and should be used only with the stated matrix, species, basis, geography, and censoring context from the paper. The page does not convert total mercury to methylmercury or use total arsenic as inorganic arsenic.

Wiki pages this source may touch

Verification notes

Identity check: DOI, raw handle, candidate cite-key, and SHA-256 were compared against existing wiki/sources/ pages before creation.
Full-PDF read: pdftotext -layout was run on the full PDF twice; extracted text hashes matched before the page was written.
Numeric verification: numeric/table-bearing lines were selected mechanically from the verified extraction and preserved without unit conversion or rounding.
Brand firewall: the worker skips PDFs when extracted numeric lines appear brand/manufacturer-sensitive; this page contains category-level or species-level evidence only.
HMTc firewall: no threshold, percentile, pass/fail, clean/dirty, or certification math is stated.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

Commit	Date	Change	Description
b01ec52c	2026-08-04	major	2 sections added
d49e450f	2026-08-03	major	5 sections added; narrative text revised