Dr. Anne Marie Mahon:

We have had a great deal of engagement with it.

We had to come to a restricted disclosure agreement, which would specify not necessarily the minutiae of samples but how the data derived from the sampling would be managed. It took a long time to agree that and it basically took two years. There were issues regarding vetoing of results. As academics, we need to know we have use of our results to publish for scientific advancement and also for the well-being of the environment and human health.

The process has been a bit restrictive, as we could not sample where we initially wanted to for various reasons that were stipulated. Examples included any treatment due an upgrade. I would have liked to have had some treatment plants representing an industrial input but we did not manage to gain permission to those. In the end, as it shortened the time in which we may have carried out the research, we had to keep it simple. We got permission to study three wastewater treatment plants. Ideally, we would have taken the samples ourselves but, unfortunately, that was not possible. Contamination is a big issue, such as with clothing fibres, for example.