Hundreds of thousands of chemical contaminants are present in our aquatic environments. Heavy metals, endocrine disruptors, micropollutants: their interactions make classical chemical analyses insufficient. That is why biosurveillance is now emerging as a more comprehensive response.
Why Chemical Analyses Are No Longer Enough
Traditional methods evaluate substances one by one. Yet pollutants rarely act alone. Their combined effects, known as “cocktail effects”, escape punctual analyses. Aquatic biosurveillance directly addresses this limitation: it measures real effects on living organisms, from the cellular level to the whole organism.
ASTEE’s Work
ASTEE, the French association of water and waste professionals, has been structuring this field for several years. Through its dedicated working group, it produces reference resources. At its 105th Congress, it notably presented a new interface listing available tools and their field feedback. In parallel, the association organises webcafés and webinars to accelerate the operational adoption of these methods.
Towards Real-Time Monitoring
Bioassays remain punctual by nature. Yet water quality fluctuates continuously. An accidental discharge, diffuse contamination after rainfall: anything can occur between two analyses. Real-time biological monitoring fills this gap. It enables continuous detection of any alteration, without waiting for sampling results.
MolluSCAN-eye, Now Referenced by ASTEE
Our HFNI valvometry technology, built on 20 years of research at CNRS, captures the biological signal of connected bivalves in real time. It therefore detects cocktail effects that remain invisible to conventional methods. Being referenced on ASTEE’s biosurveillance page is a concrete recognition: valvometry now belongs to the serious toolkit for aquatic environment monitoring.