News

Dr. Brill Regulatory Service GmbH was recently integrated into the Dr. Brill Institutes. This also opens up new perspectives and synergy effects for Hydrotox.

With a real “dream team”, the Dr. Brill Institutes will in future offer customers from the industry their own regulatory service. Heike Schimmelpfennig and Dr. Gunnar Kleist, each with two decades of regulatory experience in different areas of industry and public authorities, offer a 360-degree view of chemical testing and approval of biocides (active substances and products). In conjunction with the GLP laboratory at Hydrotox, this also opens up new perspectives in the planning of tests and the evaluation of results. Further information can be found at Dr. Brill Regulatory Services GmbH.

We have the pleasure informing you that 35 years after establishing of Hydrotox – Laboratory for Ecotoxicology and Water Protection GmbH, Dr. Stefan Gartiser will retire. The business handover was carefully prepared and completed in January 2024, when Hydrotox GmbH was acquired by Dr. Brill Institutes Group based in Hamburg. The new managing director of Hydrotox GmbH is Dr. Florian H. H. Brill. Your local contact at Hydrotox remains Dr. Christoph Hafner, who is the representative of the local management and has been assigned with the respective power of attorney.

Thus, a new generation takes over at Hydrotox. However, you as our customer will not face apparent changes in the operational processes, as the entire Hydrotox team continues to support you in future with the usual trustworthiness at Freiburg.

The Dr. Brill Institutes Group is a medium-size, family-owned group of companies with the headquarter in Hamburg. The group consists of various laboratories such as the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology and the Institute for Antifouling and Biocorrosion and employs around 70 people at various locations in Germany. By integrating Hydrotox, synergy effects are released by optimizing and streamlining processes. In addition, the Dr. Brill Institutes Group offers its customers an expanded product portfolio from a wide range of laboratory services to regulatory consulting services in the new Dr. Brill Regulatory Services GmbH. For more information, visit www.brillinstitutes.com.

We look forward continuing our successful cooperation in the future.

New research project on “Transformation and model solutions for roofs of the blue-green city”

Over the next three years, Hydrotox will be working on the ReFoPlan joint project “Implementation of the sponge city: Identification of the 10 most effective levers of the necessary transformation and sustainable model solutions for roofs of the blue-green city” on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency. Project partners are the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW, overall project management), landscape architect Prof. Dr. Manfred Köhler, the Water Technology Center (TZW) Karlsruhe and Goetz & Heintze Garten- und Landschaftsbau GmbH. Hydrotox is in charge of work package 5 “Laboratory tests” and is carrying out ecotoxicity tests on building product eluates and roof run-off water in particular.

Current publications on successfully completed UBA projects.

Recently, several final reports and publications on several projects have been published:

Further development of screening tests for the evaluation of potential PBT substances, UBA-Texte 10/2023.
Award criteria for the certification of antifouling systems with the Blue Angel,. UBA-Texts 25/2023
Methods and criteria for assessing the ecotoxicity of products, UBA-Texts 151/2022, see also UBA topic page on construction products with specialist publications. 
The authors and the laboratory team are delighted with the successful completion of the projects, which have been ongoing for several years.

You will find an update on the testing strategy for microplastics for biodegradability on our homepage.

New research project for the certification of biocide-free antifouling systems with the Blue Angel

On behalf of the Federal Environment Agency, Hydrotox and the Institute for Antifouling and Biocorrosion at Dr. Brill + Partner GmbH will be working on a further research project from September 2019 to August 2021, in which award criteria for 1 to 2 environmental labels (Blue Angel) for biocide-free antifouling products will be developed.