CRIT

Center for Research and Innovation in Toxicology

General description of the activity

CRIT is a member of TECNIO, the IT Network of Innovation support Centres of ACC1Ó and is accredited by Government of Catalonia.  CRIT has experimental expertise that involves biodegradation and toxicity determinations and risk assessment of new products with bioassays as well as biomarkers as tools for the prediction of ecotoxic effects on aquatic and terrestrial organisms.  In relation to these aspects, the experience of the CRIT-UPC has focused not only in the experimental determination of toxic properties (acute and chronic toxicology) and biodegradability levels, but also in the evaluation of the quality of results obtained with the accepted toxicity testing. CRIT currently organizes European-wide interlaboratory comparison exercises for aquatic toxicity tests (luminescent bacteria, algae, daphnia toxicity assays, and other parameters like AOX and microcystins), to study the inter- and intra-laboratory variability of these assays. 

Specific areas of research energy field

CRIT has been working in the past three years in R&D of new tools for the assessment of environmental soil quality, in collaboration with the Catalan Waste Agency. Currently CRIT-UPC has a R&D project funded by Spanish Government entitled “Contaminated Soil Biomonitoring: Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) in invertebrate communities in selected areas of Catalonia” (SOILBIOMONITOR).

CRIT is interested in some aspects related with the research in energy field, mainly the aspects related with the biodegradation processes (aerobic and anaerobic biodegradability), soil bioremediation, by application of the different technologies.