The European Metrology Network for Pollution Monitoring – EMN POLMO

The EU’s Green Deal acknowledges that « the EU needs to better monitoring, report, prevent and remedy pollution from air, water, soil and consumer products and to look more systematically at all policies and regulations ». In order to address these challenges, the Commission launched a new Strategy for Sustainability in October 2020, and adopted a Zero-pollution Action Plan for air, water and soil, in 2021.
The comparability and trueness of measurements are often compromised by the lack of intact traceability chains and appropriate quality controls, for example attained by the use of matrix-matched certified reference materials and participation in interlaboratory comparisons. Noticeable improvements are apprehended after practical demonstrations and scientific discussions on the importance of traceability to the SI with stakeholders and end-users.
The European Metrology Network for Pollution Monitoring (EMN POLMO) was created in 2022 to provide metrology support to the environmental community and industry involved in the monitoring of variety of pollutants, including chemical pollutants, radionuclides, biological & microbiological, and nano and micro particles, in the three environmental compartments (air, water and soil). Recently, light pollution and noise pollution have been included in the scope of the network. One of the main goals of POLMO is to bridge the interests of the different stakeholder and end-user, and to contribute to environmental sustainability through the provision of tools and resources, required to perform accurate, comparable measurements.
The POLMO Strategic Research Agenda identifies the key measurement challenges and opportunities in pollution monitoring and sets out a roadmap for future research and development.
Specific research priorities includes:
• Developing and validating new methods for measuring contaminants of emerging concerns, which are known or suspected to be harmful to human health and the environment but for which regulations have only been established or are still in development
• Improving the relevance, accuracy and precision of measurements of existing pollutants, in order to ensure the reliability of pollution data, for informed decisions
• Developing and validating new methods for measuring the combined effect of multiple pollutants, to understand their complex interactions and to assess the overall risk to human health and the environment
• Developing and validating new methods for measuring pollutants in the fields in real time, in order to monitor pollution levels and respond to pollution incidents, particularly in areas difficult to access

Cross section priorities have also be identified and include:
• PFAS (classification & definition of measurand; method development and interlaboratory studies; persistence estimation, exposure pathways, and health and ecological effects)
• Reference Materials (matrix matching and stability; multi analyte materials, and tailored materials to users’ needs)
• Radionuclides (reference materials, field measurements, and transition away from the legacy radiochemical methods)
• Low cost sensors for continuous monitoring (engagement with existing networks – including climate networks, use of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, calibration-less sensors, and citizen science)
• Pollutant mixtures effect (multi-parameter risk assessment, and monitoring the transition between environmental compartments)
• Environmental DNA (improvement of stakeholder engagement, and organizing interlaboratory studies)