Recital (63)

To identify potentially contaminated sites, Member States should collect evidence, including through historical research that explores information on industrial activities, incidents and accidents, using old maps, archives, press articles, environmental permits and notifications by the public or authorities and human biomonitoring or environmental monitoring data from research projects. Member States should set a list of potentially contaminating activities and be able to prioritise certain potentially contaminated sites that are most likely to pose a potential risk to human health or the environment, based on the type of activity, extent of the potential contamination, an indication that there is an immediate risk or other relevant information. As the number of potentially contaminated sites might evolve over time, a first identification of such sites should be completed within a set timeframe, based on the existing evidence, while further identification of such sites should be carried out through a systematic approach.