News & Events

 

It will bring together researchers, students and industry leaders from the Baltic States, neighbouring regions and Europe, and this year will focus on the topical issues of microplastics and pharmaceutical residue pollution. Early bird registration for the conference is now open!

 

Dr Arūnas Stirkė, Chairman of the EcoBalt2025 Organising Committee and Researcher at the FTMC Department of Functional Materials and Electronics, explains how this event will be innovative, interesting and useful.

 

 

 

 

The conference was conceived and first organised by Dr Arturs Viksna, a professor at the University of Latvia, and its origins lie in the promotion of analytical chemistry in the Baltic region. In Lithuania, the initiative was (and still is) taken by Prof. Aivaras Kareiva, Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry and Geosciences of Vilnius University. The Estonian partner is Professor Dr Ivo Leito from the University of Tartu. These are the three "cornerstones" on which the organisation of the conference has been built so far.

 

The event takes place every two years in Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. This year, we are taking up the baton from Estonia.

 

This time, we particularly welcome scientists who are looking for solutions to environmental problems using chemical and physical methods. The first target issue is microplastic pollution. One of the reasons (but not the only one) why we have chosen this topic is that the FTMC has the Department of Environmental Research that is actively working on microplastics.

 

In my opinion, there are a lot of myths about this topic (which is understandable, because it is a topic that excites the general public), and there are profane people who take advantage of this. So I hope that this conference will give us the opportunity to listen to professional scientists who will point out how chemists can help to analyse microplastics, with the contribution of the whole international community.

 

 

 

 

It is hardly talked about much, but in simple terms it is the analysis of medicine residues in nature (in soil and especially in water). A few years ago, at a conference organised by the University of Klaipėda, Dr Sergei Suzdalev spoke about the concentration of several drugs - paracetamol and diclofenac - in domestic wastewater.

 

At the time, these studies were only just starting - but it was already clear that many of the residues of these medicines were ending up in rivers in Lithuania. It turns out that the biggest problem is this: if we consume the medicines, they are not as dangerous once they pass through our digestive system and enter the environment. This is because our microbiota seems to "clean them up" a bit. But the amounts of 'free', unconsumed paracetamol and dichlofenac are huge. People literally flush them down the toilet! This really disturbed me. When you think about it, it is terrible. And we are not talking about antibiotic pollution, which is probably also huge.

 

We, the organisers of EcoBalt, decided to find out who is working in this field and how we could collaborate and develop innovative approaches to reduce contamination from medicines. Perhaps we could help companies working in the field of water treatment.

 

This is a huge problem because antibiotic contamination increases bacterial resistance. Then new antibiotics are needed, starting an evolutionary engine against which we will clearly lose because we are too slow to respond to the evolution of our bacteria.

 

Here we have a large group of Lithuanian scientists working in the field of micro-organisms - that's why we are organising the conference together with the Life Sciences Center of Vilnius University. We aim to bring in experts who will try to find partners and share their insights on how to clean up different pollutants.

 

 

 

 

Unambiguously. That's why one of the topics of the event is water chemistry - and we are sending a message to companies involved in water supply, treatment, etc. that they might find the conference interesting. If we get enough presentations and scientists that are relevant to them, we are thinking of a separate session for these companies, and then we will invite water supply and water treatment companies - or other industries that are concerned about pollution. This could be the start of some good joint projects.

 

 

 

We organise the workshops around the two main topics mentioned before. One is the analysis of microplastics.

 

The main organiser of the workshop is the FTMC Department of Environmental Research, which will be joined by experts from the Laboratory of Ecotoxicology of the Nature Research Centre, and Dr Arūnas Balčiūnas from the Marine Research Institute of Klaipėda University. I think it will be a very cool event. Young scientists and PhD students are welcome to attend, as there will be talks on methods, the latest research, and advice from experts on what to look out for when studying microplastics.

 

The next session is devoted to the topic of residual contaminants from medicines. However, we would also expect a broader range of research. For example, I have been in contact with a group of researchers in Latvia (who inspired this topic) who can measure precisely how the population's consumption of smoked meat varies over time. They do this by looking at domestic wastewater. Interestingly, more meat is eaten in winter and less in summer. But the numbers increase especially during the holidays (smiles). This is interesting in its entirety, because smoked products are not healthy, so such studies can shed light on public health levels.

 

In addition, wastewater could theoretically yield a huge amount of useful material - for example, highly accurate detection of illegal drug residues, etc.

 

So it will be very interesting here. These workshops will be the highlight of the conference.

 

 

 

 

This question is probably best answered by the Chairman of the EcoBalt Scientific Committee, Prof. Aivaras Kareiva. But I think that we are not very prominent in the world yet - but we certainly have the potential to be so. I already see a certain synergy between physicists and chemists in our Center, which is unique. This picture of scientists from different fields working together could be a great signpost for the future for us and for others.