In VANDALF, the approach is to link technology-specific, but otherwise unbiased and non-targeted chemical detections (‘chemical fingerprints’) with sets of relevant toxicological endpoints (‘toxicological fingerprints’) to identify which chemicals or groups of chemicals that can explain the toxicity. This approach was put forward by Eide et al. in 2002 under the name virtual effect directed analysis (VEDA).

• To establish sampling, sample preparation, chemical analysis, and toxicology workflows that enable the identification of CECs in wastewater samples
• To establish database-driven strategies for CEC identification using non-target chemical fingerprinting and toxicology data
• To establish methods to quantify the fraction of toxicity explained by identified chemicals
• To establish multivariate statistical models that relate chemical fingerprints to toxicological endpoints to identify unknown toxicants