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DEVELOPMENT OF ECOLOGICAL SOIL SCREENING LEVELS FOR SOIL INVERTEBRATES AND PLANTS FROM PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE
Citation:
Foster, S C., R. T. Checkai, M. Swindoll, S. Ells, R. G. Kuperman, G. Stephenson, R. S. Wentsel, C L. Russom, AND L. A. Kapustka. DEVELOPMENT OF ECOLOGICAL SOIL SCREENING LEVELS FOR SOIL INVERTEBRATES AND PLANTS FROM PEER-REVIEWED LITERATURE. Presented at 21st SETAC Annual Meeting, Nashville, TN, November 12-16, 2000.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as part of a collaborative effort among government and industry representatives, is developing Ecologic Soil Screening Levels (Eco-SSLs) for approximately 25 of the most common pollutants found at Superfund sites. As part of this effort, a process for deriving Eco-SSLs using data from peer-reviewed literature for soil invertebrates and plants has been developed. The multi-step process begins with a thorough literature search and retrieval effort based on key words. The retrieved papers are then screened with eight "acceptance criteria" designed to identify studies with appropriate information and sufficient detail to facilitate inter-study somparisons. A study must meet all of the acceptance criteria to be included in the data set. In the second step, acceptable papers are scored according to nine technical criteria. For each criterion, a paper is scored 0, 1, or 2, based on degree of agreement with that criterion. Papers with total scores of > 10 out of 18 maximum are considered of sufficient quality for inclusion in the Eco-SSL derivation. The toxicity data from these studies are ranked by both treatment effects-endpoints (e.g., reproduction, growth, etc.) and treatment measurement-endpoints (e.g., NOEC, EC10, etc.) , then assigned a confidence level (A-F). Acute effects data are not considered appropriate.