Thomas ter Laak PhD

Senior scientific researcher

030-6069657
Thomas.ter.Laak@kwrwater.nl
06-25243017

WaterpatRoon: non-target screening to routine application

Non-target screening is already a powerful technology for monitoring up to thousands of known and unknown substances in a water sample. However, further improvements will be possible in…

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Getting to grips with indirect discharges

Water authorities, environmental services and municipal authorities are increasingly seeing discharges of large quantities of chemical waste and other undesirable substances into the drains and therefore indirectly to surface water. That results…

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Sewage surveillance of drug use

Drug use is a recognised societal problem. It is damaging to public health and has negative (undermining) consequences for public security and the environment. An effective drug policy needs to be founded on reliable drug-use and -dealing…

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Environmental forensics: pollution signatures

The presence of anthropogenic substances in the drinking water chain poses challenges for the water sector, and specifically for drinking water companies. That presence is undesirable, and sometimes even problematic. Although treatment…

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Drugs production waste in groundwater: field research and action perspectives

Little is still known about the impact of the long-term or extensive discharge of chemical waste from the production of synthetic drugs (SYNDRU) on groundwater quality and therefore…

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Are PMOCs less toxic?

Persistent mobile organic compounds (PMOC) accumulate in the water cycle and are hardly removed during water treatment. For a long time, these substances have been under-researched but recent studies show that they are present in worrying concentrations.…

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Survey of drug waste emission pathways and relevance for the drinking water sector

The Netherlands has a thriving illegal industry for the production of synthetic drugs such as amphetamine (speed), MDMA (XTC) and “designer drugs”. It releases all kinds of waste…

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Integration of non-target screening, statistical analyses and bioassays for the global assessment of chemical water quality

Thanks to developments in screening methods based on high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), the detection of chemicals in water now not only allows for the detection of specific substances…

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Exploration of sources, behaviour and risk of new substances

At present, the count for substances with a CAS number stands at over 194 million. New substances are being registered, produced and applied at a rapid pace. The…

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Nanotechnology in water applications

NanoNextNL is a consortium directed at research in the field of micro- and nanotechnology. More than one hundred companies, universities, knowledge organisations and university medical centres make up the consortium. As a…

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AquaNES

Water scarcity, excess water in cities and micro-pollutants in the water cycle are challenges for now and the future. In AquaNES, we test constructed Natural and Engineered Systems (cNES) to face these challenges, develop a monitoring programme…

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Developments in water quality at surface water intake points for drinking water supply

Future developments in water quality at surface water intake points for drinking water supply constitute the key climate-change associated risk for the drinking water sector. This was a…

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Data mining in suspect screening data; searching for relevant new chemicals in different water types

Data from suspect screening analyses collected over the past few years contain a treasure of information. The data originate from samples of drinking water, groundwater, surface water and…

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Improving water quality prognosis at surface water intake points for drinking water supply

In an earlier project, ‘Developments in water quality at surface water intake points for drinking water supply’, prognoses were made for water quality under the impact of climate…

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Chemical water quality

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Blog

AquaNL day 3: Water quality, water reuse, and chance encounters

27 March 2026 — The third day of AquaNL was devoted to water quality, water reuse and the question of how we…

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News

Doubling of research projects looking at drug residues in the wastewater system

20 February 2026 — 2025 saw a considerable increase in KWR’s wastewater research looking at drug use. This research is primarily conducted…

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Blog

EUDA Reference Group meeting on Drug Markets and Crime

11 November 2025 — At the EUDA Reference Group meeting on 4 and 5 november in Portugal, drug experts of 27 European…

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Article

Pathogens in the picture: safe drinking water with QMRA

07 October 2025 — Quantitative Microbiological Risk Assessment (QMRA) helps drinking water utilities to assess and manage microbiological risks in drinking water.…

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Blog

Persistent and mobile – KWR joins ZeroPM’s workshop in Dessau, Germany

03 October 2024 — KWR participated in the ZeroPM consortium’s 2nd workshop on September 19-20, 2024, in Dessau-Roßlau, Germany. The event was…

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News

15 years’ research into drugs in sewage water

20 March 2024 — Over the 2010-2023 period, KWR researched drug use in the cities of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leeuwarden and the Eindhoven…

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News

Time is running out – WFD fact sheets for four important substance groups

21 July 2023 — KWR and Vewin are collaborating on fact sheets about urgent substance groups for drinking water sources. The deadline…

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News

PFAS: an ongoing focus in the water sector

17 January 2023 — For more than a decade, KWR has been studying PFAS in the aquatic environment, finding them everywhere. Insights…

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News

Designer drugs dodge the law

30 September 2021 — Every year tens of new substances appear on the market in Europe; substances that actually have stimulating, psychotropic…

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News

Hazards of consumer products to the water cycle

30 March 2021 — An investigation of twenty types of consumer products makes it clear that we are still far from the…

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News

SETAC honours Pim de Voogt with Emeritus Membership

04 December 2020 — The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) has accorded Pim de Voogt its Emeritus Membership award. This…

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Column

A moral compass: using sewage water to study drugs use

03 July 2020 — More than half of the Dutch population believe that privacy concessions are an option in the fight against…

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News

EUSEME: Drugs in sewage during Dutch lockdown

17 June 2020 — In the week after the announcement of the ‘intelligent’ lockdown in the Netherlands, KWR tested levels of illegal…

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News

Wastewater analysis reveals trends in international drug use

23 October 2019 — The results of seven years’ wastewater analysis have been compiled in an article published in the prestigious journal…

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News

2018 figures on drugs in European cities’ wastewater

14 March 2019 — The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) today published the results of drug monitoring of…

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Blog

How to deal with micropollutants in water

13 March 2019 — Additional treatment steps for WWTPs; Learning by doing, doing while learning As WWTPs in general haven’t been designed…

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Article

Best H2O article 2014: pharmaceutical spreading via WWTPs

23 April 2015 — On 23 April 2015, at the Royal Dutch Water Network (KNW) spring conference in Utrecht, Lieke Coppens (KWR;…

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