News
Risk assessment of pollutants: Conference “Environment 2024” from September 8 to 11, 2024 - former LOEWE project AmbiProbe is co-organizer
Together with the Neu-Ulrichstein Research Center and two specialist societies for environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology, JLU Giessen and the Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen are hosting the “Environment 2024” conference from 8 to 11 September 2024. The conference is co-organized by Rolf-Alexander Düring, member of the LOEWE research project “AmbiProbe - Mass spectrometric in-situ analysis for health, environment, climate and safety”.
The risk assessment of pollutants was the focus of the “Environment 2024” conference in Giessen and Homberg (Ohm). The conference combined basic and applied research and provided insights into current environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology and regulatory topics.
The approximately 250 guests from science and industry discussed the findings not only in the lecture hall, but also directly on various objects in the field. At the THM, which provided the infrastructure this year, current topics ranging from theoretical models and laboratory experiments to complex ecosystem studies and computer-based modeling were presented. A special feature of the conference was the field day on September 10 with around 25 practical field demonstrations at the Neu-Ulrichstein research center in Homberg (Ohm). It offered insights into the implementation of complex ecotoxicological tests. After the conference, the set-ups will be available to pupils from secondary schools in the region for some time to help them find out more about training and studying.
“The amount of plastics that sooner or later end up in the environment and cause potentially undesirable side effects there now far exceeds the biomass of all mammals,” says Prof. Dr. Rolf-Alexander Düring from the Institute of Soil Science and Soil Conservation at JLU and formerly LOEWE-AmbiProbe. “Responsible handling of these chemicals - numerous different polymers in the case of plastics - is a highly topical issue at the conference.”
The two specialist societies for environmental chemistry and ecotoxicology - SETAC GLB and GDCh U&Ö - bring together basic and applied research with regard to the risk assessment of chemical substances. Integrated into the conference was the “Young Environmental Forum of the GDCh U&Ö Division, in which young scientists were able to present their research results.