Barriers and facilitators to implementing the European code of cancer practice in a rural and coastal setting: a qualitative study.

Pharmaceuticals in the environment may have adverse effects on organisms even at very low concentrations. Although most pharmaceuticals are not persistent, they are constantly present in the environment due to their continuous release from, for instance, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Oceans act as a sink for pharmaceutical loading (Chen et al., ; Zandaryaa & Frank-Kamenetsky, ). However, low but biologically significant concentrations may be challenging to detect using only traditional sampling methods. Grab water sampling is used in the regulatory monitoring of harmful chemicals. However, its limitations have been recognised, as it provides only a snapshot of the chemical concentration at the time of sampling (Röemerscheid et al., ; Taylor et al., ). Environmental concentrations of pharmaceuticals have been demonstrated to vary depending on both environmental conditions and seasonal patterns of use (Baumgartner et al., ; Lindholm-Lehto et al., ; Vieno et al., ). As the concentrations fluctuate, the timing of the sampling event affects whether the concentration peak is detected or remains undiscovered. Hence, the concentration below the detection limit does not automatically mean that the chemical is not present at the study site. Therefore, an instant grab water sample cannot necessarily be considered representative of the chemical status of the watercourse. With passive sampling, the chemicals are accumulated into the sampler material over a time period of up to several weeks. This can help to enrich the trace concentrations, which remain undetected in grab water samples, to a measurable level. Thus, passive sampling can bring new insights to discussions about monitoring harmful chemicals. The Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Sampler (POCIS) is widely used and is the first commercial passive sampler for studying moderately polar to polar organic chemicals (Alvarez et al., ; Bayen et al., ; Vrana et al., ). The most frequently used receiving phase of the POCIS sampler is the hydrophilic lipophilic balance (HLB) material sandwiched between two polyethersulfone (PES) membranes. For instance, Poulier et al. () monitored pesticides with POCIS samplers and grab water samples and automatically collected composite water samplers and noticed that POCIS detected trace concentrations and yielded more representative data of studied compounds which were not even detected in water samples.