Research vessel Albis on river Elbe. Photo: André Künzelmann/UFZ

Department of Exposure Science


The Department "Exposure Science" aims to determine the internal and external exposure of humans and various key organisms of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems to complex mixtures of complex mixtures of chemicals and anthropogenic particles, to identify risk drivers and to quantify source-specific chemical quantify source-specific chemical footprints.

We will investigate the sources, occurrence, environmental behavior and fate of chemicals in different environmental compartments, including biota, to improve our understanding of the processes that determine the partitioning, bioaccumulation and transformation of chemicals and to link these to their structure and physico-chemical properties. Based on this, we create models that predict the distribution of chemicals within organisms and in the environment.