1. Introduction

The main strategic objective of Romania in the field of water is linked to European integration, which involves harmonization and implementation of the acquis communautaire in the field of water quality protection. National Water Law No. 107/1996 [1], updated in July 2015, legally enshrines a novel conception on the status of water (Article 1, paragraph 1):

© 2017 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

renewable natural resource, vulnerable, and confined; indispensable for life and society (its physical dimension); raw material for productive activities, source of energy, and transport route (its economic dimension); critical element in maintaining the ecological balance (its environmental dimension). The European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD) [2] establishes a framework for the protection of waters and consists of a new vision for the management of water resources in Europe. Mainly sustained on ecological elements, the ultimate objective of the WFD is the achievement of at least "a good ecological quality status" for all surface waters.

According to the estimation of the World Health Organization, about two‐thirds of diseases are caused by the polluted water. Through its accession to the EU, Romania has undertaken to comply with the European regulations on water quality [3]. Within the United Nations Environment Programme, which supports the surveillance of water quality in freshwater ecosystems worldwide, by its global system of environmental monitoring (GEMS)/Water Global Network [4], the determination of heavy metals concentration is mandatory when the water quality is assessed.

The proposed subject represents a highly current field; the concentration of heavy metals in water being an intensive subject researched worldwide [5–7]. Some researchers have determined metal concentrations in water, sediment, plant; others have studied the metals effect on live organisms [8–10]. Heavy metals are seen as potential hazard for human health and ecosystem as they cannot be degraded, being continuously deposited and incorporated in water, sediments, soil, and vegetation. Anthropogenic activities may lead to important accumulations of toxic metals into the environment; therefore, the assessment of contamination degree in the aquatic and terrestrial environments by means of elemental analysis became a common monitoring activity of our days.
