Published date: 30 January 2023

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 1 March 2023, 12pm

Contract summary

Industry

  • Research laboratory services - 73111000

Location of contract

Any region

Value of contract

£1

Procurement reference

CF-0030900D8d000003VQwdEAG

Published date

30 January 2023

Closing date

1 March 2023

Closing time

12pm

Contract start date

19 April 2023

Contract end date

14 February 2025

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (above threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements above the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

The Environment Agency is a key delivery partner for the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan. The EA have been monitoring data for over 1500 chemicals that can be used to measure exposure at a single point in time, but there are no suitable measures of the effects on aquatic fauna or flora caused by that exposure.

The Outcome Indicator H4 on the exposure and effects of chemicals on wildlife therefore requires development of novel effects indicators to demonstrate effects at the level of the individual that can be used to predict sub-lethal effects in aquatic organisms caused by exposure to chemical mixtures. The effects measures need to be robust, easily adoptable by a regulator and provide demonstrable environmental protection.
Mixture effects are critical to understanding ecological impacts in the environment, as individuals are never exposed to single compounds in isolation, but all ecotoxicological data used to determine safe thresholds are based on exposure of a very small number of species under controlled experimental conditions using good laboratory practice standards. This leads to uncertainty in predicting impacts based on published Predicted No Effect Concentrations used to determine Environmental Quality Standards. This work will contribute to the development of an organism-based indicator to determine in-situ and in-laboratory culture effects and help to predict the scale of natural population impacts.

About the buyer

Contact name

Ohalei Aworinde

Address

Nobel House ,17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR
GB

Email

ohalei.aworinde@defra.gov.uk