Citation:

Erickson, R. Aquatic Life Criteria: The 1985 Guidelines and Beyond. SETAC North America, 38th Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 12 - 16, 2017.

Impact/Purpose:

This presentation is part of meeting session providing the history of certain efforts at ORD/NHEERL/Mid-Continent Ecology Division, Duluth, MN. It reviews the development of guidelines for developing aquatic life criteria. As such, it provides no new information and has no policy implications.

Description:

The publication in 1985 of U.S. EPA’s “Guidelines for Deriving Numerical National Water Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Organisms and Their Uses” culminated several years of effort by personnel from the EPA’s Environmental Research Laboratories in Duluth, MN; Narragansett, RI; and Corvallis, OR to develop a more rigorous framework for setting water quality criteria. This presentation will describe the genesis of these guidelines and their landmark contributions to improving water quality criteria and standards formulation in the U.S. and elsewhere. Relative to prior criteria efforts, notable features included a formal derivation procedure to provide consistent results, minimum data requirements for taxonomic coverage, species sensitivity distribution analysis to quantify a community endpoint, averaging periods and frequencies to which criteria concentrations apply, guidance for applying acute:chronic ratios, and a process to address the dependence of toxicity on physicochemical exposure conditions. Related guidance also addressed site-specific modifications of criteria. This presentation will also describe subsequent and ongoing efforts at Duluth and elsewhere in EPA to improve various aspects of criteria formulation. The contents of this abstract neither constitute nor necessarily reflect US EPA policy.

Record Details: