ABSTRACT
Environmental quality standards (EQSs) are widely used to help protect the environment and human health and are considered by many to consist simply of the stated “limit value” for a substance plus, perhaps, the time over which the standard applies. An example of this might be an annual average EQS for lead in water of 7.2 µg L−1 to protect the freshwater environment as proposed in the Water Framework Daughter Directive on EQS (European Commission [EC] 2006).
