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Ecotoxicological effects and risk assessment of pollutants
Citation:
Pereira, R., A. Cachada, J. Sousa, J. Niemeyer, James Markwiese, AND Christian P. Andersen. Ecotoxicological effects and risk assessment of pollutants. Chapter 8, Soil Pollution From Monitoring to Remediation. Academic Press Incorporated, Orlando, FL, , 191-216, (2018).
Impact/Purpose:
Terrestrial soils are a critical component of ecological systems, both chemically and biologically. It has been estimated that one gram of soil can contain billions of organisms representing thousands of different species, interacting in a complex trophic structure that provides society with food, shelter, clean water and other ecosystem services upon which society depends. The field of soil ecotoxicology is a developing field with the goal of protecting the soil resource from man-made disturbance, especially the introduction of chemicals that may alter the structure or function of soils. Despite increased knowledge and understanding of soils and soil processes, current ecotoxicological risk assessment protocols generally rely on single species toxicity tests that may not adequately protect this important societal resource. This chapter reviews current ecotoxicological procedures, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. It then briefly highlights risk assessment guidance in Europe, USA and Brazil to provide a comparison of different approaches. Although the different guidance and regulations are not critically evaluated, the goal is to increase international awareness of different approaches, and to help generate discussion among scientists on improved ways to study and ultimately protect soils. This chapter contributes to CSS 18.02.
Description:
Until somewhat recently there was limited awareness about the impact of soils on human health, ecosystems, and economy. Only in the second half of the twenty century the world awaked for the poor condition of soils, and to its several threats (e.g. soil contamination), as well as for the exponential loss of arable land. For this reason, terrestrial ecotoxicology is a relatively recent branch of ecotoxicology, and thus it has to deal with the problem of few available data. This makes difficult the evaluation of risks associated with past and future soil contamination, which has been progressively integrated by environmental policies from different sectors. In this context, this chapter aims to describe the major scientific approaches (e.g. assessment factors, species sensitivity distributions, equilibrium partition method) proposed for evaluating of risks of chemical contaminants to soil biota. The major drawbacks and advantages of each method, and how they deal with the lack of data for soil organisms, without compromising the level of protection to be achieved, are presented. Further, a brief description of the main pieces of legislation produced in Europe, USA, and Brazil targeting the evaluation of both risks of new/existing chemical substances (prospective risk assessment), or the risks of contaminated sites (retrospective risk assessment) is provided. Despite all the developments made, ecotoxicologists need to proceed obtaining data to better characterize the sensitivity of soil organisms to the most concerning chemical substances, as well as to be engaged in integrating the overall soil complexity in the environmental risk assessment (ERA) processes for a better protection of soil functions and services.
