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Knowledge sharing to improve toxicity testing efficiency and outcomes: SETAC’s Aquatic Toxicity Testing Interest Group and Culture Troubleshooting Subgroup Activities
Citation:
Bowersox, M., C. Flinders, Jim Lazorchak, N. Love, T. Norberg-King, D. Soucek, AND T. Watson-leung. Knowledge sharing to improve toxicity testing efficiency and outcomes: SETAC’s Aquatic Toxicity Testing Interest Group and Culture Troubleshooting Subgroup Activities. 2022 SETAC NA Annual Meeting, Pittsburg, PA, November 13 - 17, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation will cover the activities that the culture trouble shotting sub-workgroup of the Aquatic Toxicity Testing Interest Group within SETAC has been dealing with for the past 2 years. This effort is related to ORD's WET testing research.
Description:
Toxicity testing has been used globally to evaluate the effects of specific compounds, effluents, and ambient waters on aquatic biota. Standard toxicity testing methods have been developed, which are used for regulatory purposes, monitoring and Toxicity Reduction Evaluations/Toxicity Identification Evaluations (TRE/TIEs). SETAC’s Aquatic Toxicity Testing Interest Group (ATTIG) was initiated to advance the science of aquatic toxicity testing methods, promote improvements and consistency in current testing and culturing protocols, and advance emerging in vivo and in vitro methods. Consistent and robust toxicity test outcomes depend on test organism culturing practices and adherence to method guidelines. Because educational and training opportunities related to toxicity testing are limited, the ATTIG initiated a Culture Troubleshooting subgroup with the primary objectives of providing a trusted, open, and reliable community for aquatic toxicity professionals and researchers, and a resource repository of aquatic toxicity organism culturing and testing information. Specific focus topics for the working group include method improvements and best practices, performance and sensitivity of test organisms, culture troubleshooting and solutions, method development, test checks, and data and reference toxicant control charting. These collaborative efforts are expected to increase the collective ability to focus on environmental protection by maximizing testing efficiency through consistent culturing conditions across laboratories and providing a platform to address issues pertaining to culturing test organisms used in standardized tests. This presentation will provide an overview of ATTIG activities related to culture troubleshooting, culture challenges associated with non-standard organisms and new method development, and data analyses and sharing. Additionally, a summary of best practices for culture and test performance monitoring parameters, and variability in toxicity estimates associated with reference toxicants will be presented.
